Windfalls

a devotional for late summer

My Dear Wildroot Parables Readers…

This week, I have a post-within-a-post for you. :)

For me, overwhelm and stress turn into feeling ungrounded. Sort of…separate from my body. And lately, I’ve been feeling it more than usual.

It’s a hazard of the job. As a freelance writer and editor, so much of my work and admin tasks are fully virtual—documents, emails, invoices, online meetings, etc—that I like to balance it out with hands-on hobbies to stay focused and healthy. I love to cook and bake and preserve and harvest and garden, because those things keep me connected to the tangible world beyond the computer screen.

But lately, there simply hasn’t been time to do those grounding things I love. And I feel it, a creeping unease.

The reasons are ironically positive. For the first time in my five-ish years of dedicated freelance work, I feel like my investment of time is slowly turning into providence. I haven’t quite hit my goals, but I’m the closest to potentially “making a living” I’ve ever come, so far. I have a rotating slate of clients, a growing body of work here on Substack (along with the peripherals that come with it), and opportunities for expanding my income in ways I never thought about before, without sacrificing my creativity or my integrity. It feels like windfalls. Like unearned grace.

And yet, as anyone who has ever visited an orchard knows: once those apples are on the ground, you have to do something with them. If you don’t, they’ll rot.

So, for inspiration, I was perusing my back-catalogue here on The Wildroot Parables and I found the following devotional from around this time last year. And it made me smile, and sigh, and feel like I can ease back into those grounding things in a season I love. To soak up the unique, transitional flavor of this season. I know I won’t be perfect at it, and I know that my priorities may lay elsewhere on any given day, but at least I can open my hands to the possibilities of this threshold.

I hope you enjoy the following meditation on this beloved season, updated only slightly to reflect certain changes one year later.

And I hope, wherever you are, your windfalls are plentiful and sweet.

Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash

oh darling september!
teacup-steam
and yellowing leaves sun-warm;

summer clings to an unopened umbrella
while autumn peers corner-shy
yet growing
bolder;

september!
you arrive in sweet-spice and morning shivers,
you do not barrel in
as some months do

but tiptoe, delicate
on bare and brassy
feet.

I love September. I love the holy in-between-ness of it, the way it slinks in on tentative tiptoes. One summer day you’re over-warm and uncomfortable, and then one morning you wake up and you catch a whiff of autumn.

It’s subtle, but it’s there. Just a hint. 

Before living here on these five acres, my sense of the seasons was very regimented and abstract. As a teacher, September meant something very different. I still catch myself falling into those old familiar patterns, even a few years removed from my teaching days; walking through the Back To School aisles at the big stores and remembering how it felt to approach September as though I was standing in the wings, waiting for my entrance onstage. Readying the classroom. The deep breath before the storm.

Now, September feels different. There is still a sense of urgency, but it’s all centered around the need to prepare ourselves, our home, for the cold months. We’re stacking our firewood, and trying to eke the last bits of goodness out of a garden that didn’t get much love this year (but is still loving us generously, anyway). The apples on the tree are just landing on that perfect stage of ripeness, tumbling from the tree to be crunched and munched by our sweet-tooth-bearing dogs. The tumult of apple preservation—juicing, canning, drying, freezing—is about to begin, always a sacred source of stress for me. A crucible, but one that I emerge from feeling triumphant when it goes well.

I’m thinking about fall cleaning, tidying the house ahead of the long stretch of being indoors. I’m taking stock of the pantry, the cupboards, the freezer—what are we missing? And soon we’ll be sweeping the chimney, always a messy but powerful seasonal milestone. 

But for now, it’s September. And September means liminal, boundary, warm days and cool nights. Trading sandals for moccasins, moccasins for socks and rainboots. Slipping my grandmother’s coat on when I need to take the dogs outside after dark yet still shedding my sweater in the afternoons.

I stand on the threshold, grateful for summer’s gifts, yet ready for fall’s pace. Here, in September, I’m filling my cup with the spices of the season to come.

There’s no scent quite like it.

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