AUTUMN FIELDS (NUMBER 200)

(PATHWAY AND TREE/ GRASSHOPPER/ BAMBOO STICKS/ DOG AT ATTENTION/ FINE RED BERRIES AND THE FINAL BIRDS OF THE DAY).

Looking back after reaching halfway across the sixty four square hectares, a tall tree, strangely full of leaves and vines all the way up the trunk, waits and witnesses. The lurid summer heat and oppressiveness has gone and the autumnal breezes, hues, frosts, and spirit is in full bloom. The path goes along and then to a rise, then along again, and down, then up and along, and it carries like that. There are places you can go off and to the left or right. To the left is a summit where at the bottom a hidden marsh lives that sprouts on its sides hundreds if not thousands of buttercups untouched and unknown the July afternoons. Beyond that are train tracks, but they are not as easy to get to as one would think. The cargo or freight cars come past and when they do, the sneak quickly out of the cover of orange and yellow fall trees in order to show their own green, blue, sometimes even purple or silver squares,- and then after a few thousand yards they head back in like a dream like a secret like quick vision.

Up from there and back on the path the grasshoppers have been borne. They scatter like

myriad tiny flames in a fire as a stick lodges the log out. It’s the small ones, like ants or flies that make the air for an instant practically opaque down by the feet. A few larger ones are more calm, and will watch you if you move slowly, waiting for you to pass like the peculiarity, the possible threat, the monster that you are. I have seen these on leaves, trunks, and even rubber tires. Stuck by their intricacies, design, and beauty, plus speed and agility, I usually try and lean over and down looking for a photograph as close and at the same time as non-intrusive as possible. Then I go and sometimes he or she goes, while at others it stays there, somehow sagacious with its calm and border-line piercing look.

Sometimes we run into walker and dog or dogs or group or groups. Sometimes not. The earth there seems to be able to absorb much, and the people, though nobody is perfect, are usually good natured. Maybe this has something to do with them being outdoorsy types or dog or nature enthusiasts. Who knows? There are as we go all sorts of berries and vines, feral shrubs and taller, older trees. Once a large woodpecker with the actual red read or feathers flew out and away, no doubt disturbed by our presence. And down near the end where the forest beings again, - was that a fox or a coyote one Saturday morning after night storms that practically danced along the perimeter looking at us and then decided to take off to the deeper ways and labyrinthine paths? This time, what was noticed, were simply a couple bamboo or bamboo-like stalks growing from the ground and staying around happily together in the air.

Of course the dogs run, sniff, walk, play, wonder, circle back, go forward, and disappear up and into interesting and secreted ridge ways and beyond. Sometimes they can sense something I can’t, and sometimes I can see or sense something they don’t, but mostly it’s the former. One stands at attention practically, looking beyond, maybe listening for something. This body language, these proxemics, will develop into a chase, a greeting, or else just relax and move away to somewhere else as in saying in movement I thought it was something, but it was not really anything to worry about on the one hand or get excited over on the other.

Leaving the many contours and straightaways that house the fields. Skipping the forest this day, we simply and graciously continue to head out. There is a large trunk that sits hollowed out and it seems it would do well in a fairytale or some kind of magical story. Some birds make a circular movement in a group, far in the pre-dusk sky and are silhouetted against the white cumulus and the deep blue by turns. Though silent, they are akin to part of some song, yes, a section of song or a verse from poem that the fields and the entire atmosphere sings continuously. There is a new series of berries as I look down. They have not been seen before. So fine and small and red, plus living on intricate little branch-like trees or plants themselves. I have missed these, and realize again what I know,- that there is always something new, even along the seemingly same ways.

More birds catch my eye then. They are beyond.

I look up and up at them, cupping a hand over my eyes for the sun. They move through and about the air, alone and together in the final dance of the day.