Preservation Mode

a devotional for fall

Photo by Rob Wicks on Unsplash

the opening of autumn's sky
is a hurry, 
then a hush,

rain
the end
of the season of play;

rest lies on the far side of rush
as we lay up everything we find,

fruit and firewood
food and flame;

well,
I guess we're as ready as we'll ever be. 

Since moving here, my relationship with the weather forecast has changed significantly. Back when I lived city-adjacent, knowing whether it was going to rain or not was simply a matter of what shoes I would wear that day, or whether I needed a raincoat, or if an umbrella would help. 

But living out here, the first stretch of rain after summer’s end is a bit of a milestone—and a threat. You feel it in your bones, a sort of animal panic. The rain is coming. 

It gets harder to process firewood in the rain. Harder to sweep the chimney in the rain. Harder to harvest the apples without them going bad in storage. Gotta get as much done as you can before autumn’s sky opens up. Our neighbors called—come and harvest tomatoes; we have so many, and they’re going to go to waste!—so we ran over with our bags, filled them to the brim. Ten gallons of tomatoes that would otherwise rot. A handful of hot peppers, the last ones on the wilting branches. 

The rain is coming—move fast!

And now, the hunkering-down begins. Long rainy afternoons mean plenty of time for preserving the bounty, canning and dehydrating, taking stock of what’s in the freezer. My stockpot isn’t big enough for canning quarts, so a neighbor lends me hers. We all know what it’s like to feel the panic, the pressure of preservation mode. We do what we can to feel ready. 

Soon enough, the pressure will be over, and there will be no more harvest to bring in. The cold will seep from the ground up, claim every summer stalk. The chimney will be swept, the firewood as good as we can get it, and we’ll be in for the duration. 

Sure, the modern world exists. The grocery store is a handful of minutes away. We’re not truly alone, out here. But in this way of living, you feel just a bit further removed from it all, at the mercy of the season’s tide. You feel that all it takes is a foot of snow, a power outage, a washed-out road, and suddenly you’re stranded.

So we prepare. We preserve. We put up.

And then, we pause.

Discussion Question

Do you feel a need to prepare yourself for the changing seasons, in any way—emotional, spiritual, physical? What do you “store up” for yourself and your loved ones as a providence against transition into leaner times?

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