October again. The days go down heavily and soon. The morning comes later, cold and dark. Geese mark the gray sky. As much as I try, I will never like the fall.

When I was a child living in the woods with my parents, October meant darkness. October meant time inside. October signaled the coming of the spiders. I remember the linked geese passing overhead full of direction. I remember the melancholy hoots of distant trains in the morning as I waited for the school bus on Grover Hill. I studied my vaporous breath and made it mirror the trains’ exhalations. When one puff had fully disappeared, I blew out another impish breath to keep me company. The trains’ voices trailed south. October. Everything seemed to say, so long.

Death hung in the air. I heard the crackle of dry umber leaves underfoot and of gunshot echoes over the mountain. The frost-soft apples fell under bare trees, waited for deer. Mornings smelled cold and sterile, like certain snow.

October was a reaper stealing sunlight and abundance, leaving me to worry. I worried about the woodland animals. I worried about my family. Would we have enough wood, enough food? Would we all survive another long winter, each of us folded into our corners, dreaming?

Living off the land in the woods of Maine, my family spent many summer days intently thinking of winter—cutting wood, replacing chinking between logs, tending the garden, and canning its crop. However, nothing solidified winter’s certain arrival like the first frost. Stepping out of bed onto pine floors in the melon hues of dawn, my bones felt like icicles inside my skin. Outside, the field was an old giant’s beard, white and wiry. There was no more bounding out the front door in my nightshirt before my parents rose. No more barefoot, dew-soaked visits to the bullfrogs in the pond before breakfast. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. First thoughts questioned how to make it through the day. First thoughts were thoughts of night coming again so soon. Even the golden fields ablaze with morning sun couldn’t dispel images of the darkness to come inside our cabin.

Photo: Krysten Newby

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