Symphony for Fall

When we listen to a symphony – really listen – we hear more than beautiful music.  Woven through the harmony is a story with passages that are brisk and lively or slow and lyrical – much like life.

Many times we come to a symphony performance from noise. Preoccupied with our own thoughts, however happy or discordant, we walk into a concert hall with hundreds of people greeting one another, laughing and chatting. Dozens of musicians add to the din as they acclimate their instruments to the stage and then tune them to the oboe’s A – brass, woodwind, string, percussion – everything at once – dissonant and chaotic.

But, when the conductor walks to the podium and raises his baton, all fall silent.  Musicians prepare for their first notes. We lean forward, anticipating the beauty ahead.

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For several weeks late this summer, David and I battled Covid infections, struggled (sometimes unsuccessfully) to prepare two different cars for shows and conventions, and planned our first-ever cruise ship vacation – all while navigating a painful anniversary of deep grief. Sometimes the dissonance of so many conflicting emotions made me want to cover my ears against the racket! 

I was so preoccupied and distracted that I barely knew what month it was.

Until God seemingly raised His baton and directed my attention… with quiet.

One morning I was surprised by an eerie near-silence and bird feeders still filled with seeds. The birds not only were not singing, they were not around – not to sing, not to eat, not even to flutter among the leaves. 

Overnight, it seemed, migrating birds had headed south, and those staying on for the winter headed to the woods to feast on fall-ripe berries and seeds and to stockpile their personal caches for winter.

Amazed, I turned from quiet feeders to the east and was surprised to find the sun rising so far to the south. Had it been that long since I last savored a sunrise? When I turned to the west to watch the sun twinkle in pasture dew, I was surprised again by already yellowing leaves in the locust trees.

I took a deep breath and smiled with the realization that a Symphony for Fall was about to begin.

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We’d been delighted with our first-ever Red-tailed Hawk pair in the spring. They spent days perched next to one another in the same tree or soaring together over the fields – silent and regal. When they disappeared, we assumed they’d moved on. 

But, in mid-September, a seemingly lone Red-tailed Hawk shrieked as he swooped across the pasture and fields several times a day.  Long, bone-chilling shrieks that I’d not heard outside the Lord of the Rings movies.  Was it one of the pair? Why was it so disturbed?

An online visit to the National Audubon Society revealed that our shrieking raptor was likely a Red-tailed Hawk parent warning would-be-predators away from its fledges who were still learning to fly and to fend for themselves. 

The “music” wasn’t exactly lyrical, but it was emotional.  Only if the first brood is unsuccessful in late spring will Red-tailed Hawk parents set a second brood so late in the year. The hawk pair had likely lost their first family, but I was happy to know they were back and making sure their second family thrived.

~~~

The tempo of the symphony picked up for a while with shorter, cooler days. The leaves formed a crescendo against startling blue skies before winds pulled them down. Kids raked the leaves into huge piles for jumping. Chain saws and wood splitters roared through fallen trees ready for bonfires and wood stoves. V’s of geese honked south, and parades of bright jeeps and motorcycles rumbled by trailing laughter and music on sunny Sunday rides through the country.

~~~

Then, for a brief time, the rhythm of the “music” slowed again as temperatures rose and families in shorts and flip-flops gathered for lazy barbecues.  But the distinctive call of elk bulls in rut reminded us it was, indeed, Fall. Only during a few weeks in September and October do elk bulls proclaim their prowess to the cows and their superiority over other bulls in a process called bugling. But their call is like no brass horn I’ve ever heard. A combination of coughing, barking, and even chuckling is part of the bulls’ repertoire, but it is the whistling that makes the call so wild and haunting and beautiful.

I typically hear the elk only once or twice a season – if I hear them at all. But the bugling of 35 elk bulls  on the Krause Elk Farm was one of the highlights of this year’s symphony. Nearly every morning and evening for weeks, the calls carried across two miles of ripening corn and soybeans to form the perfect accompaniment for many photo walks.

~~~

The impending time change and temperatures ticklimg the freezing mark signaled the beginning of the last movement of Fall’s symphony. 

I was on a quest for wildflower seed heads to photograph late one afternoon when the light on two curls of a drying corn leaf begged a moment with my camera.  I knelt and was studying their delicate curves when a soft clattering broke my concentration. 

Something walking toward me through the field? I waited and watched. But, I was met only with quiet.

Back to the curls.

Again, the clattering.

Again I stopped, vigilant.

Only silence. I peered into the field from my low vantage point looking for a cat? A coon? Too soft for a deer. Not a skunk, I hoped. But nothing appeared.

I returned to the curls, and within moments the clattering began again. 

This time I stood up and listened. Hard. I wasn’t afraid – but I was curious. As I stared through the spaces above those heavy, hanging ears, a cool breeze lifted my hair, and I saw…

The breezes were intermittent and oh so gentle. With each puff the long, graceful corn leaves lifted and dropped against one another in what looked for all the world like soft…  applause. 

I smiled and smiled and – right there at the edge of a corn field – I  joined in, applauding softly and whispering my thanks and praise to God for the beauty of His Symphony for Fall. 

~~~

May we never be too distracted to notice the beauty of God’s music in our lives.

“Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” Psalm 46:10

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord… Psalm 96:11-12