A Wonderful Time of the Year

Yes, the goldenrod are out. I am not allergic so I find them beautiful as many people do not.  With the equinox we immediately began to have very cool nights and beautiful sunny, warm days.  This is autumn as we all love it. After a summer that seemed to pack some of every kind of weather in at random--cool, hot, humid, rainy, foggy, cloudy--now we have what is to me perfect autumn weather.  Only the youngest and tenderest trees have given in to the chill and begun to turn red or orange or gold,  The show of color, here on Cape Cod, usually comes much later -- well into October. 

I walk past this stand of goldenrod down to the beach (you can just see some of the horizon line behind them) early in the morning as I did during the summer when the sun was out. I have the conservation area called Long Beach almost entirely to myself. Perhaps I see a runner or two, a dog walker or two but quite often I can look up and down the mile-long bow of beach and see no one -- oh, the occasional gull and sometimes a few ducks resting on their way somewhere southerly.

Quite a few shells of horseshoe crabs litter the water's edge and I feel a certain awe inspired by these ancient beings who were already ancient when the dinosaurs took over ruling the wetter parts of the earth.  I usually turn the shells over  so they don't seem to be laying on their backs exposing their innards to the sky.  And I sometimes make groups of them to keep one another company.  I feel, on one hand, as if I'm doing some housekeeping--neatening the shore--and on the other, as if it's some archetypal rite of respect for the tenacious ancestors. I've noticed others are doing the same, as if there are gatherings of the elders there on the sand.