We would feel quite differently about the season if it were called not fall but drop. Winter, spring, summer, drop.
Trees have begun to drop their leaves, but the leaves themselves fall – they twirl and flutter. They fall up sometimes when the breeze is right, and land lightly. The nuts from the towering black walnut tree beside the house don’t fall, they drop. They ring the truck like a gong, roll down the roof like gutter balls at a bowling alley and make the entryway hard-hat country.
Their husks will be turned into a sepia-colored ink and dyes in shades of yellow. Their rock-hard shells will, over the winter, succumb to the 4-pound steel lever-action nutcracker purchased from an Amish hardware store. The tedium of shelling will be rewarded with nutmeats far superior in flavor to their pale English relatives.
This year, there’s no need to race the squirrels to the bounty from the walnut and hickory trees. The few local squirrels that survived last fall’s Squirrelmageddon apparently realize there’s little competition and loaf from nut to nut.
The winter of 2019 will be easier on wildlife. The “mast crop,” that stock of nuts, berries and seeds that sustain deer, bear, wild turkeys and countless rodents, along with the fox, coyotes, hawks, owls and other critters that dine on rodents, is at least average. Most tree species bear heavily at intervals, the better to combat the creatures that devour their progeny.
This year, far fewer rodents mean more nuts and seeds will become trees.
Now, before the frenzied race to prepare for winter begins, is the time to slow down and savor New Hampshire’s best season. Stare down the lawnmower. Ignore the undrained hose. Give the wood a chance to stack itself. You never know.
Asters, flowers named for stars, white, lavender and purple, are everywhere. On still days they sway under honeybees, bend under bumblebees.
The fruit crop is bountiful, though the apples and wild grapes have yet to be sweetened by frost. There’s time enough for that. The augurers of foliage predict a later, longer and somewhat less splashy show. It’s barely begun, even up north, but the tops of swamp maples are reddening and a few trees have turned. Drink them in and train the eye for the coming explosion of beauty. Soon the setting sun will turn country roads into stairways to heaven. Yet force yourself to notice the small. A maple leaf swirling in a stream eddy can stop a heart.
A giant white puffball is rising from the yard, which means the fall mushroom season has begun. Take a walk with an expert; you can find them online.
The hawk migration has begun. Watch them from Carter Hill.
A few monarchs can still be seen, but the milkweed pods have begun to burst. Their seeds take flight on their gossamer airships and say goodbye to summer.
Play a bit longer, but when the geese form a V and honk off to the south, it will be time to get to work.