Welcome to the mardi gras

Come join the carnival: it’s party time!

These voiceovers are recorded ‘in the field’ with ambient sounds and occasional stumbles. My aim is to give you an evocation of place and a moment of tranquility. This week’s background is mostly the breeze in the tree tops, teasing the leaves free of their hold.

Silver, and gold

Greetings from the moss,

From Prelude, a quiet beginning.  Sotto voce. Under one’s breath.  Like the mist, the season flows gently into the valley, first colouring the edges of moss and pasture, then penetrating the wood. 

Foot to the floor, we hurtle into fall. Con enfasi. With emphasis.

This week I’m sharing notes written—collected—at intervals over the past week. It’s an invitation to the party: the carnival is in town.

A carnival of lights: droplets of rain reflect the morning sun

If you can, go outside. Enjoy the sun or rain, which intensifies colour; kick through the leaves; smell the musk of damp decay; hear the stags bellow on the hill; feel alive—feel life.

Shadows are as beautiful as light

1. 

Itinerant colour  

quietly 

opens the season  

To mellow mist add frost 

Mustard and cress birch; yellow among green 

Midas touches the outline of the beech  

From first embers to flickering flame: gean 

Tiny rowan burn hot at your feet; 

their parents bend low with their burden of scarlet berries and are slower to reveal their true colour 

Lime green becomes yellow; 

maple flushes—blushes—scarlet. 

In the wet wood, the cotton grass rusts  

All this begins slowly, without fanfare. 

Written here the words accumulated imply a drama but  

reality is a quieter play. 

It takes the rain to reveal the truth of the shift, 

adding vibrance. 

Suddenly Autumn is emphatic, emboldened.  

At the edge of the heath, startled summer is confronted.  

For now, yellows are dominant, triumphant. 

And I wonder, what will the promised wind and rain leave? 

I make it my quest to find out. 

2. 

I wish I could freeze the moment the birch leaves turn, preserve their arrangement and colour like the dusky Merryweather damsons that I made into jam yesterday. But as the sun rises, ice melts and the yellow rain begins once again. 

Yellow rain falls

3.

The morning is clear, frost white. Ice lies on the path, a memory of rain. Out by 8am, before the sun climbs over the eastern hills. There are riches wherever you look. Frost was the lure, but there are no webs visible, just sugar-coated grasses, heather, and leaves. The birches call. The proverbial sweetie shop has opened its doors. I find myself taking an unusual way round this small patch of ground and as the sun rises, I greedily gather new confections—a preserve of moments. 

Sugar-coating

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Until next week,

Encore:

From this week last year:

Today is fulfilling its promise of extreme wetness. We are just north of the area given a red weather warning for exceptionally heavy and disruptive rain, but decidedly in the amber. The day is filled by sound as much as sight: falling rain, dripping water and wind-torn leaves.

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All words and images copyright © Michela Griffith except where otherwise noted