Autumn this year isn’t exact­ly what the poet John Keats described as : “Sea­son of mists and mel­low fruitfulness,/Close bosom-friend of the matur­ing sun . . “. But it does, I think, pro­vide a good metaphor for look­ing at the world in what one glob­al affairs writer char­ac­terised as “the most dan­ger­ous peri­od inter­na­tion­al­ly since the end of the Cold War.”.

As in the wider world, on lakes like the one where I am now, autumn is a time for deci­sions and actions that can­not be put off, and car­ry seri­ous reper­cus­sions if they’re made with­out care and consideration.

For birds like the great blue heron, the win­dow between lilt­ing off to move away from an intrud­ing kayak­er and hav­ing to set off on a per­ilous migra­tion south for the com­ing win­ter is rapid­ly narrowing.
For those who live where the bird will go, the time to choose between turn­ing their backs on the real­i­ty of vot­ing for a dis­cor­dant nar­cis­sist who bla­tant­ly offers them dic­ta­tor­ship over a coher­ent can­di­date with poli­cies based on demo­c­ra­t­ic rule and poli­cies intend­ed for the greater good, is approach­ing tip­ping point.
Here on the lake, autumn deci­sions are more mun­dane in the grand scheme of things than those of the heron, or Amer­i­can vot­ers, but no less obligatory.

Docks must be pulled onto shore to  keep them safe from ice that can get as thick as a meter.
When spring comes, it recedes from the shore like a polar ice sheet, strong enough to crush and drag even docks anchored by four and more 50 kilo­gram cement blocks. Glob­al warm­ing is chang­ing that, but in spite of the extra effort it requires, the pru­dent haul them high enough on shore to cope with the way things used to be.
In what pes­simists see as proof of  cli­mate change and opti­mists regard as the immutable cycles of Nature, this year the most glo­ri­ous ele­ment of  autumn isn’t what it has been for the past few seasons.

The chang­ing leaves are more pas­tel than the vibrant palette  we hope for, but let them soak into your soul for a bit, and you’ll find they are no less beautiful,
There’s a les­son in that for the antag­o­nists in the Mid­dle East ‚who see “total vic­to­ry” on their terms as the only accept­able way to change the sta­tus quo from hair-trig­ger ten­sions that change into blood­shed and destruc­tion on a sched­ule less fixed, but no less per­pet­u­al than the leaves.

                   THE LINES ARE CLEAR

Lines etched on rocks over mil­len­nia mark how much high­er the water has been when the spring rains come and the ice melts.
The lev­els are sub­ject to both the vagaries of the weath­er and how much water is released through a sys­tem of dams that reg­u­late the flow from the top of the water chain where this lake is, to share the boun­ty with those who live fur­ther downstream.

Even though the sys­tem, known as the Trent-Sev­ern Water­way, was start­ed almost 200 years ago, the exact amount of draw­down can’t be pre­cise­ly pre­dict­ed in advance and must be done with care, to avoid dam­age along the water­way that even­tu­al­ly emp­ties into the Atlantic Ocean.
Com­pare that to the destruc­tion if nuclear arms “red lines” are breached. And yet, the annu­al assess­ment of the Stock­holm Inter­na­tion­al Peace Research Insti­tute (SIPRI)  con­clud­ed that “…the num­ber and types of nuclear weapons in devel­op­ment have increased as states deep­en their reliance on nuclear deterrence.”
The  line “We don’t want the smok­ing gun to be a mush­room cloud”,used by then Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleez­za Rice to help launch Gulf War II ‚turned out to be apoc­ryphal (which she sure­ly must have known it was), but it is rel­e­vant today.
Autumn days here are, thank­ful­ly, often clear and cloudless.
As I pad­dled north the oth­er day, I caught a faint whiff of wood smoke in the air.

It turned out to be ris­ing from a cot­tage hid­den in the trees. A res­i­dent who, like me, wants to wait until autumn ends before for­sak­ing the lake for the win­ter, had lit a fire in antic­i­pa­tion of the tem­per­a­ture droop­ing clos­er to freez­ing as the sun began to sink below the treeline.
Pru­dence and antic­i­pa­tion pro­vid­ing comfort…another les­son autumn has for those who pay atten­tion, and embrace change.Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
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