The 100 Days

My body is calm and the day drizzles with a loving anticipation. I know there is not much longer until we return to rainy days, minimal work hours, and all the time in the world to imagine another yoga class, the next chapter of my novel, or yet another route for a damp or windy walk around the winding roads of this beautiful island. I am tired. Perhaps it is because we are in the final days of August; perhaps it is due to a healing session that I partook in recently. I am grateful for this marathon summer, and the blessings it has provided. I am also grateful for the future chance to turn inward and write, paint, dance or whatever my heart leads me to in the upcoming winter slumber.

But first, we will embrace a beautiful autumn. It will be filled with golden crystalline light, chilly damp mornings, dark evenings welcomed with a fire in the hearth, golden leaves and spiders, creating a dance that will lure us all inward. Folks will roll down their sleeves and reconnect, take off their work boots and dancing shoes and take a moment as the summer fringes settle and bend us towards another season; a season filled with harvest, community, and connection. We will move slowly towards a decelerating down, and as we awaken to a crisp frost in the winter months, we will barely remember these hot strenuous days, the multitudes of strangers on vacation to an island getaway that also serves as a safe haven for us in the winter months. The 100 days of August will be but a memory that exists in light conversation. Our bodies will be healing the memory and strain we put ourselves through, and when April rolls in with bursting flowers we will be prepared to ride the stallion of summer once again.

But for now, in our exhaustion we wait. We move as we have done for three and a half months, though inside we are beckoning the soft web of fall. Soon she will arrive. With her rest, her solitude, her spaciousness, her frailty; and we will embrace this within ourselves as we place our summer armor on the stoop.