September, From my Brother Steve's Archives

This Month in Nature Steve Manning, Naturalist from the archives Sept 2 1997
enjoy......

"September is the summer summed. All the effort and striving of the sprout, the stem, the leaf and the flower culminates in ripeness and seed set. On the mountain ridge the whitebark pinecones swell with fat nutmeats that Clark's Nutcrackers will collect and stash to insure the survival of both nutcrackers and the pine forest. Along the meadow-edged stream gravels the fireweed loses a gossamer whirl of silvery, wind-sailing seeds, while in the tangled thickets of the stream's lower reaches the wild rose hips begin to blush like scarlet embers. In the woodland acorns hang fat and shiny on the oak branches where the gray squirrels work frenetically to put by the winter hoard. And in every open place there are the dry whispers of the grasses, their green turned gold and their seed-heavy heads nodding with the promise of not only their own kind, but also of future fieldmouse families, Song Sparrow serenades, and the dances of the Sandhill Cranes.
Within the warm comfort of bounteous September are the tell-tale signs of the annual ebb of that protoplasmic enthusiasm that is so intimately connected to the intensity of sunlight. The treetops and skies are full of songbirds and shorebirds hurrying from the diminishing daylight of northern realms. There are Magnolia Warblers headed to Costa Rica silhouetted against the midnight moon, Lesser Yellowlegs rhythmically beating to the beaches of Uruguay, and the Panamanian-bound Tree Swallows forming restless flocks that have the chaotic wholeness of smoke.
Even as the asters put on the flowery finale of the year with their blue, starred beauty and galactic profusion, unseen in plant stems everywhere the sap is falling, retreating into the safety and surety of bulbs, roots and earth. With this withdrawal green chlorophyll is no longer replenished, unmasking at last the hidden browns of tannin in the beech leaf, the dusky purples and brilliant scarlets of anthocyanins in the maple and liquid amber, and the bright clear yellows of carotenes and xanthophylls in the aspen and cottonwood.
As we slip past the equinox into the time of long nights, September offers in its bounty of seeds and nuts, in its south-streaming feathered multitudes and in the chromatic apotheosis of the leaf, a season's summing and a comfortable assurance that we'll see it all again."
Images and words, Copyright Steve Manning


We lost Steven in December 2024, and he is keenly missed.