The Cold Rolling Towards Me

I began this post in longhand, sitting at my desk this morning, allegedly working, watching tufts of cool mist hanging in the air outside the glass door. This is the time of year when the nearest neighbor is separating his cows from the calves, in preparation for market. The worried mamas have been bawling all day, as they have been for the two days before. The air over the farm is anxious, fretful, which is a shame, because we’ve just gotten our first dose of fall-like weather, about 50F at night and in the mid-70s today, air as clear as an infant’s eyes, same deep blue, same lack of omens and portents.

I let the dogs out as soon as we arose this morning, and when I opened the door to let them in for breakfast, the spotted twins presented me with a little possum, the second one this week. The first one had done a good job of fatal-fakery and I was able to rescue him, toting him up to the woods, but this morning’s little feller was truly and surely a goner, death by heeler. I know this because I went to look at him several hours after I deposited him under a linden tree in the woods. He was still there, grinning into eternity, and the flies had found him.

Last night, I forgot to put the plastic ruler in the dog’s water dish on the back porch. I started doing this to provide the daddy longlegs an escape ramp, because they like to get a nighttime drink, and they usually drown once they get down into the steep and slick-sided water dish. There was a lonely little spindle-legged chap floating in there, and I felt sad for my oversight and for the tiny life it cost the farm.

There were no hummingbirds about until well past noon today. I was beginning to think they’d already migrated, but the chilly morning must have spurred them to sleep late. They’re out there now as I write this, whirring and arguing and sipping and squeaking. Not for much longer, though. The Amazon region beckons.

Fall and winter are rolling towards us like a cold boulder, picking up speed. The departure of warm weather will surely catch me off-guard and behind in my chores and tasks…just as every season does. If I were a real subsistence farmer, I would have starved to death a long age ago.

I do love this time of year, even though the hiraeth hits me in the evenings as the thin sun slips down behind the western ridge in the cemetery. That sense of melancholy longing for a home I’m not sure I’ve ever possessed. I am reminded that “querencia” is the Spanish word for that particular patch of country to which a longhorn cow would cling, to which she would return if she escaped from a drive hundreds of miles up the trail. Or it can be a man’s homeplace, the spot to which he will return if he can, the only place in which he feels truly comfortable. But words in the tongues of Wales and Spain are still only words, and they can never fully capture the feeling that sits in certain men’s chests as they watch golden strands of sundown withdraw across still-green fields, as they feel the still-new chill.  The place that querencia feels most real to me is a place in which I was not born, a place my wife showed to me for the first time almost twenty years ago, a mesquite and chaparral-choked magical kingdom in West Texas that looks like every cowboy movie you ever saw. I will never forget the evening we came up over the rise on the remote highway — Mrs. Orr was driving — and I saw the force and fury and bleak beauty around Spur, Texas. I told my wife, “I feel like I’m in a movie. Or like I’m coming home.” That feeling has never left me.

And I will leave you now, with a song, of course.

Rest well, dear friends.

~ S.K Orr