Autumn Harvest and Waldorf Homecoming

I wonder if how people are jerked by the heartstrings while driving along during fall harvest. I drove from home to Forest City, Iowa and back on Saturday for Waldorf Homecoming. On the way down, I passed too many combines to count. The first field I passed where there were trucks and wagons lined up along the end rows almost stopped my heart. I love the smell and sounds and sight of a golden field ripe and being picked. And I miss getting to drive a tractor or a truck to help--or to do the chores at home so my dad and brother could stay in the field. I loved fall on the farm.

 

 I was in somewhat of a hurry (imagine that!) so I didn't stop to take pictures. I just snapped these two on the go. I also had about a six-mile detour on gravel. Since I live on a gravel road, it didn't faze me until I heard a familiar rattle and roar that I haven't heard close up for a couple decades. Tears started running down my face. It was simply the roar of corn being augered into a grain bin, but the sound is so much ingrained in my being that hearing it made me miss my dad and being on the farm to the point of tears.

 As I drove on, instead of being sad, I felt grateful that I had loved my growing up years on the farm so much that such a thing as the sound of corn augering could make me cry.  And I loved every minute of driving through the midwestern fields, lush and golden, in spite of the drought we've had this year.   
Here's the Scarville Lutheran Cemetery sign. I had to snap a picture of that, too. The pastor at Fjeldberg Lutheran Church in the late seventies, Rev. Norris, came from Scarville to Huxley. His daughter Barb ended up in my dorm at Waldorf and was a friend of mine. It felt serendipitous to drive past this cemetery on the way to the reunion.

I didn't take enough pictures....but I had a blast with friends  I hadn't seen for over thirty years. I sold some books at an alumni craft sale in Salveson Hall in the afternoon...but the best part was getting to see Jeneen (here), Bev, Pam, Carol, Sue, Liz, Diane, Nancy, Kathy, Kris, Mark, Ron, Mike, Bruce, Gary, and many more. I'm waiting for more pictures from more friends, and maybe I'll post a few more.

Harvest and Cycling, my autumn treasures

Autumn has a way of making us pensive, don't you think? Of course, it makes us aware of the passing of time. This year, it's all the more true: my son is getting married in a week, and my grandson turned one year old this past week. But I don't feel old. I just feel as if I'm gathering more information about the world inside. I can only, only hope that makes me a better writer.

I get up a little slower when I've been sitting on the floor, but otherwise, I still feel as physically capable as ever. Maybe I'm fooling myself. But then again...I had a happy realization while cycling last week. I love watching the long shadows during an evening ride in the fall. What I don't love is that dark comes so quickly. Twice this year, I've squeaked home on my bike in the throes of darkness. A couple near misses. Time to mount my light for safety--just in case.

But watching my own shadow, I snapped this self-portrait.  I remember how when I started riding fifteen (!!?) years ago, the guys' long shadows were so smooth; their long shadow legs looked like smooth, fast pistons stretching out, up and down the ditches as we passed. Mine looked awkward and certainly not smooth by comparison. Last week, I watched my shadow and made this happy discovery: lo and behold, somewhere, somehow in the last decade and a half of riding, my own cadence has become smoother. My legs looked like pistons, too. I'm going to relish that realization.

Then again, there's the beauty of harvest. It's sad to me because it means soon the fields will be bare and brown-black although there's a certain beauty of bounty in that, too. It also means the long Minnesota winter is too soon upon is.

The harvest itself fills my heart so full that sometimes I think it will burst (to embrace a cliche). Riding my bike alongside tractors, golden beanfields, or a combine like the one in this picture I took last week reminds me of the richness our soil still holds (IF we take care of it). The smells and sounds wash over me with memories: walking out to Dad's combine in my Halloween costume to show him my ghostly self before we went trick-or-treating; riding rounds in the combine with him, working aloud on my Confirmation memory work; just riding, my forehead pressed against the glass window (exactly as Lainey does in Jake Riley: Irreparably Damaged), watching the grain or corn wash like a wave up into the combine header.  And those glorious last autumns at home, when both my brother Bill and Dad were out in the field and they trusted me to do the chores all by myself. I felt so useful. What a good thing to feel.

There was the night when I was probably sixteen when I drove the Cub Cadet into the hog lot with a cart full of 5-gallon buckets of feed, and realized I couldn't back it out without the cart twisting sideways.  I was utterly stuck. What did I do? I emptied the buckets, fed the pigs, and then straightened the cart behind the little tractor by  herking it around by hand so I could back out. I don't think I ever told Dad or Bill about that and here I am, publishing it for the world. I still can't back a wagon or a cart to save my neck.

But I can ride my bike down county highways, flanked on both sides by golden, browning fields of grain and corn, and breathe it in, and be glad to be this tiny part of the plenty of the earth.