October 18

Hunter moon

The Native Americans proclaimed this full moon as the Hunter Moon, and I suppose it was a time associated with gathering game both large and small to secure provisions of both flesh and fur for the long winter months ahead.

This is the downside of course to later October, as the colors begin to diminish and the trees increasingly become bare. The brilliance of autumn’s change is now giving way to our realization that we must prepare both physically and spiritually for the next season.

The autumn of the year is much like the autumn of our own lives, where the harvest that resulted from our productive days has largely been accumulated and set aside. The youthful days of spring’s pace, of growth and sensations and vigor have become sweet memories. So too the maturity of our summer, where the drive to grow slackened into our need to provide for the next cycle, and autumn has seen witness to these efforts, resplendent with a renewal of color and vitality that for a moment transports us back to youth. But this season, like the years, progresses ever onward.

But though there is now a decline in color and in life, there is also something we will come to appreciate as the next few weeks unfold. The passing of the leaves of this year may mark the end of life’s production, yet their departure restores vistas to the far hills, hidden for so long by the lower woods that gave so much to our summers. We now have clarity and distance in vision to the hills beyond and perhaps more understanding of its value in the scheme of the cycle of the seasons.