Earlier this year, I attended the celebration-of-life service for an old friend. Hazel had died at age 103, but I first met her in 1943 when she was a young married woman and I was a 12-year-old new in town. Her passing meant the shuttering of yet another window through which I once could see “way back when.” The last living person who knew me during my childhood.  

There once was a time when the order of my day included playing with my buddies, fighting with my sister (13 months younger), wishing mightily that this fourth year of grade school were over, doing a couple of assigned farm chores, and putting off homework as long as possible. That arithmetic workbook was the sinkhole of my existence.

A recent late September hike along Meadowlark trails quickly confirmed the obvious: our campus biology is sliding full bore into fall—a wonderful time to be out, moving slowly, or sitting quietly, and watching the changes going on all around. Leaves are dying, preparing to drop, and changing colors as they do. Soil and water microbes and fungi soon will begin the large scale digestion of those leaves into their constituent minerals and chemical compounds.

If you grew up in a family that camped or liked to sit around a patio firepit, an open fire was perhaps one of the first memorable outdoor mysteries you encountered. What young mind wouldn’t be mesmerized by that flush of heat on the face, or those flaming, leaping tongues that disappear quickly into smoke and air. Ancient humans probably felt the same reactions. 

Some days, I’m preoccupied with the animals that live their lives all around us but are seldom seen or heard. Many people are not even aware of their presence. I’m thinking of the racoon, deer mouse, hispid cotton rat, bobcat, chimney swift, or the short-tailed shrew, a small voracious and venomous mammal that also lives in our area. These organisms owe their lack of publicity to being solitary, shy, quiet, nocturnal, or relatively small—or all of the above.

As is normal for this time of year, we’ve had some strong wind days during the past three to four months. But, just as for heat, or its absence, cold—or for the force of gravity-- we know the existence of wind only by its actions. No one has seen the wind, but “when the trees bow down their limbs, the wind is passing by.” 

Today is the 80th anniversary of the huge, costly, and ultimately successful allied D-Day land assault on Hitler’s Fortress Europe. Although mere words never can remotely capture what happened that fateful day in June 1944, I want to share a powerful experience that my dear late wife, Imogene, and I once had there on Omaha Beach.

One morning in July 1990, we stood on the 100-foot-high cliff overlooking Omaha Beach. Even with a week in Paris (our favorite city) and 10 days in our beloved Ireland ahead of us, we assumed this moment would be the emotional highpoint of this trip.

Have you ever had a favorite tree? I suspect that most people don’t give much thought to this idea. After all, trees just sort of stand there, but most of us do look forward to fall leaf colors. There are those limbs that break off in the wind and clutter our surroundings, and there’s always the fall season leaf drop. That’s when leaves from all over our block seem to be blown onto our lawn--and become our responsibility. Thank you, lawn crews!

We can hear them vocalizing (some would say yelping) many evenings on the Meadowlark campus.  We sometimes see their tracks here-or-there in mud or soft soil, or a tuft of either fur or feathers that makes us wonder if it’s a leftover from some coyote meal. We sometimes see them out in a field or pasture or racing across the highway in front of us. They work very hard at keeping their distance from humans. In spite of the mystique surrounding them, and the fact that they occur everywhere, coyotes (Canis latrans) present no direct danger to us. 

Here we are in the post-Holiday Season doldrums. And what to do with ourselves? There’s always football, but that doesn’t do much for the souls of humans. We could take a fishing or beaching walking vacation somewhere in the Caribbean. We could offer to care for grandchildren to give their parents a chance to rest up after the holidays. After all, changing batteries in toys is hard work.