Early autumn is our driest time of year.
But today, gray clouds gather where blue had stretched endlessly for weeks. The first drops fall—tentative as a deer stepping into open ground.
In the valley’s fold, the stream runs thin as thread. White limestone shows through, exposing the earth’s pale bones. Minnows crowd the shrinking pools, their silver bodies flashing in desperate circles. A great blue heron stands motionless at the water’s edge, patient as stone.
Forest paths have turned to powder. Any disturbance raises small clouds that hang in the still air. Ferns curl inward, their fronds brown and brittle. The understory retreats into itself. Skunk cabbage has vanished, snakeroot leaves have withered, and winter’s bare earth appears between the trees.
Then— soft rain.
Not the thunderous downpours of summer, but a gentle soaking the earth receives like a long-held breath finally released.
The stream still whispers where it once sang, but already the forest stirs. Colors deepen overnight. Yellow and scarlet seep through the canopy like watercolor on wet paper. Perhaps the moisture quickened autumn’s hand. Or perhaps gray skies simply frame the leaves’ fire better.
But the trees aren’t the story.
Look down.
Among fallen leaves, their edges just beginning to curl bronze and burgundy, something unexpected emerges. Native asters open purple stars close to the ground, each petal catching droplets like tiny prisms. Goldenrod lifts yellow plumes that smell of honey and hay. Ironweed stands tall on purple stems, its deep violet blooms heavy with the last bees of the season, their bodies dusted gold.
In the shadows, witch hazel blooms in tiny ribbons, its green leaves glossy with rain. Where snakeroot once wilted, it now bursts into bright white clusters. Honeysuckle winds through it all, its white trumpets still breathing sweetness into the cooling air.
These late bloomers understand something spring flowers never do. While the world prepares its winter bed, while trees shed their green clothes and creatures seek their burrows, they spend their color without hesitation. They bloom not in spite of the approaching cold, but because of it. Because rain came. Because life insists on itself in the spaces between endings and beginnings. Because beauty needs no reason beyond its own brief flowering.
Watch how they rise from drought-hardened ground. How they transform scarcity into abundance. See how they offer themselves completely, holding nothing back for a tomorrow that may never come.
Nothing lasts.
Not drought that cracks the earth. Not plenty that floods the streams. Not the perfect purple of an aster. Not the life that admires it.
Only this remains: the endless conversation between withering and blooming, thirst and satisfaction, beauty and horror, day and night, winter and summer, life and death
Only this: the sacred between.