Footnote: Nachsommer

We all deserve a moment of contemplation sometime

Today, I’ll give you a few images from my neck of the woods. Just as this year’s ‘Indian Summer’—the locals call it ‘September Summer’ and I would call it a Nachsommer (After-Summer), referencing the writer Adalbert Stifter’s 1857 eponymous novel—is winding down, I’ve planned this one for a few days now.

Perhaps as a reflection of this posting from 1.5 years ago:

Some Nachsommer Thoughts

The weather was spectacular—those autumn morrows with loads of mist floating above the little creek and the nearby meadows, followed by bright-blue skies, almost like the ones I remember from my childhood; as the afternoon progresses, due to our little farm sitting in a little vale that runs north-south, the western ridges block the sun from reaching us, an early reminder of what winter will bring.

While waiting for the ferry, a gaze across the majestic fjord.

My ‘street view’ across the paddock, with the gang being out and about.

The little creek across that road, on a somewhat overcast afternoon earlier this week.

That’s the view of mine when I get out of the house; if you’d follow that little road uphill, you’re bound to meet our sheep and horses.

For the time being, I do think about these past years, sometimes glumly reflecting on all the dreadful things and human misery they entail. This isn’t a time to give up, nor is it an opportunity to cast in one’s lot with those who—let’s face it: they never stopped—wish you ill.

This is a time of remembrance; this is a time of stopping, even if it’s ‘only’ for a moment, and contemplate the little things and tiny creatures.

They, much like this bug, presumably don’t know much about history, mathematics, or gene editing. I’m unsure we’re better off, but being outside a lot is a very apt reminder that all these creatures, big and small, have their place, their purpose, in this universe.

If anything, Covid has, perhaps strangely, reinforced my lingering belief that the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Pandemic™’ was, first and foremost, an attack on the human spirit, that strange body-and-soul continuum of ours.

The world has become so monstrously grotesque that sometimes it is advisable to just stop, look at a tiny bug, and think about the confluence of events that brought you—and that tiny bug—to this point.

Or a walk on a sunny morrow with my wife and the horses.

Or being followed, for whatever reason, by our chicken across the meadow, stopping, watching them wander off to seek out little insects.

Doing so brings perspective, and it renders many of the things I typically write about quite…not-so-important, if not irrelevant, for a moment.

Remember that moment; it won’t come again, but it matters.

More than we can imagine at the time.