After a morning dog walk on Tuesday I ran into a neighbor with a small beagle puppy, triggering memories of our first beagle puppy. From the moment we got our puppy on that long ago August day, the way I viewed the world around me changed forever.
August means many things in different parts of the country. In some places kids are already back in classrooms. In New England it’s high season on the Cape and Nantucket.
In State College our seasons are marked by the coming and going of students. Our August focus turns to the fall semester. The slower pace of summer explodes as armies of parents and students invade every retail and grocery establishment for the big move in.
The world’s artificial human calendars skew our sense of time, detaching us from the natural world’s rhythms.
Biology, meteorology, astronomy, chemistry and agronomy were never my strengths, but I did pay some attention in school. I know the first day of fall is not Labor Day, but a moment determined by the equinox in late September.
In this country, fall retail begins before Labor Day when candy corn and other fall/Halloween stuff appears in stores right after back-to-school sales. Mid-October means leapfrogging Halloween and Thanksgiving to sell Christmas stuff. Before we even finish Christmas and New Year’s you’ll see Valentine’s Day stuff.
No one is immune to that skewed sense of time. But that changed for me in August 1995 when our puppy Rosey joined us.
If the sun was up, Rosey wanted to go for a walk. We lived in Toftrees then, near woods (much of which have since been leveled), the golf course and State Game Lands. Pretty soon I realized that much of the natural world was already going at sunrise.
We’d see deer, wild turkey, geese overhead, birds flitting about or singing in the trees. Rosey walked, nose down, zig-zagging, tracking the scent of rabbits.
The walks showcased nature’s changes. Goldenrod burst in bloom, the last flowers of the late summer. Within weeks, leaves started to turn before falling, often hand-in-hand with the first frost. The ground would freeze, a harbinger of the first snowflakes covering our valley in a white blanket that crunched under our feet.
Daylight shortened. Morning walks were in the pre-dawn darkness and evening walks occurred in increasing darkness until the shortest day of the year arrived in late December. Then as quickly as winter arrived, the thaw came bringing buds, a sign of future leaves on the trees.
Thawing snowpack found its way to valley streams. After moving to a new house, morning walks took us by Spring Creek and through Millbrook Marsh. The streams, combined with learning to fly-fish, taught the value of winter snows filling spring-fed limestone streams. Our waters support an abundance of insects, the base of a food chain supporting trout, aquatic life and other species like osprey, blue heron and bald eagles.
The insect world has its own timetable. Just spend a night on Penns Creek near Coburn at sunset in late spring. The green drakes come from the trees like a swarm, causing the waters to roil as numberless trout feed on them.
Spring is also the time I plant tomatoes, basil and oregano. The cycle of planting to harvest teaches patience; you can’t rush them. It also attunes you to the weather. This summer has been a big challenge and it’s no secret we need rain.
As surely as gardens teach about patience and the weather, they have one more lesson.
As soon as the first plum tomatoes started to ripen last August, a groundhog moved into the yard and snatched some. We’ve had groundhogs around before but this was the first one that ever went after my tomatoes. (This year we’ve fenced him off successfully… so far.)
This groundhog’s taste for basil and tomatoes (maybe he’s stashed mozzarella and balsamic vinegar somewhere) earned him the name Guido the Groundhog. This is his second August so once again nature speaks to us.
While my beagle Rosey died in 2010 a new dog still connects me to the natural world. The 22 months without a dog created a void, so we got another one.
Once again a dog plugged me into natural wonders: sunrises over Mount Nittany, first light in Spring Creek Canyon and the sound of the waters of Slab Cabin Run, or Thompson Run or Spring Creek are a therapy with no equal.
While we’re increasingly reliant on technology, tips, diets or apps for improving peace of mind and everything that ails us, really a connection to our sense of self could be so simple. Maybe it’s as simple as planting in a small plot of ground, walking along a stream or in the woods, or just recognizing that Guido the Groundhog is back.
The simplest of things can ground us to that which roots us in this world. Amid humanity’s chaos, time to listen to a quack, a bark, wind through the trees or water flowing gives your soul an oasis of calm amid the storm.
