The setting sun this time of year takes on a different hue, especially from the Arkansas ridges, especially through the canopies of southern yellow pines. October has long been my favorite month, what with the closing of the season and the spookiness but southern autumns hit differently and always have.
History matters and long-established cultural boundaries (as well as our obvious latitude) seal the deal: The Ozark Mountain Plateau is part of the American South and no amount of Yankee incursion can change that (though I may build a little fort of cornbread and stewed tomatoes just out of spite).
Hallmark autumns are a time of fashionable flannels and hearty pumpkin carving, chilly, cozy nights and crisp, sunny afternoons. While we may have a plethora of pumpkins, Ozark afternoons are, more often than not, a searing 90 degrees as we sweat straight through ill-thought-out flannel shirts. I know better than to carve a pumpkin for my front porch. The poor thing would rot by the end of the week.
Nonetheless, the season is changing and you can feel it in your bones. Even in the heat, the sky looks more like winter than summer. Far, high up cirrus clouds shimmer in the gray, scudding out patterns like the sand on a wind-swept beach. The crows call differently, the jay birds are louder. Black and furry wooly worms are out and about and more than a few big Ozarks tarantulas can be spotted crossing roads and rocky glades.
The persimmons are ripe and social media photos are being posted of the split seeds (a "spoon" inside the seed is said to represent heavy snows, a "knife" sharp and icy winds). Wasp nests are close to the ground this year, which is said to denote a mild winter. I can only hope. Geese are seen flying in V formations and impending change is in the air. Even for the uninitiated, there is a sense of magic and lore.
Humans are constant contradictions. "For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep doing," wrote the Apostle Paul in the Book of Romans. We nod approvingly from a staid and padded Sunday morning pew, knowing full well we live out that truth. Somehow in the South, the sacred and the profane have always existed side by side better than elsewhere, perhaps because the sacred is less cloistered in a rural landscape. Perhaps because the profane is closer as well. Survival has always taken prominence here in this mountainous and beautiful pile of rocks. Mountain culture is all its own, kind but harsh, and rarely suffers fools.
And so, as the sunlight warms the afternoons uncomfortably and the twilight sky heavies with Oklahoma dust turning each evening a weird shade of apricot pink, it is easy to question our place in a world gone heavy with loss and seeming chaos of disagreement and inconsistency. In such moments, I am reminded of times past and loved ones long gone, of black walnuts hulled on a quiet evening front porch and fiddle music haunting and profane.
I think of all the life and light even in the darkness, and the contradictions without and within. It is in such moments I can believe there is a reason we are here, even now, most especially now, as the sassafras leaves redden, the shadows lengthen, and a hot and flaming sun drops just beyond the ridge.
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