On the last day of November, I took a hike to the river. It was early. The day was cold. The sun was climbing brilliantly from the horizon towards mid-morning sending golden rays down again through the frozen mist.
I often had come to this place, only sitting in the woods, clinging to the hillside, a few feet from the road in the midst of steamy summer when the brush and bugs were almost impenetrable.
With the clean sweep of autumn however, I could see there was a better way. I would circle round the field, straight down to the river where a muddy sand bar was washed on a bend in the stream.
I crossed the barren field. The ground was frozen and every last bit of foliage was plowed under. Then down through a small patch of brush, I came to the river and slid down the bank.
But if the bugs were dead, and the ivy and snakes banished, the thorny brambles, the prickly burrs, the hidden holes in the rough terrain, did their best to dissuade me, but I would not be dissuaded.
Along the way, (eureka!) I found a piece of chair, a woven mat, enough to keep me off the cold ground, and I laid it down and sat in the tall remnants of grass and peered out from my nest surveying the river.
The water pooled before me like smooth azure glass. The leaves lay along the edges encased in sheets of ice, frozen. A bird sang solo, and then there was silence.
The trees across the river stretched skyward-- bare, brown, graceful and still, poised for the long sleep on the frost filled earth.
Autumn was over.
Winter had come.
"It was You who set all the boundaries of the earth. You made both summer and winter." Psalm 74:17
