Generally Speaking

The leaves were late to turn this year but now are in full riot. It has been warm, almost surreally so, and it feels to me as if the upcoming season is coiling itself, fattening us on sunshine and shirtsleeves, turning us soft and witless before the killing strike.

Every day lately I pass someone putting up a late cutting of hay, third cut or even fourth, the familiar whir of the mower, that sweet smell of fresh-cut grass. I dreamed I was driving our neighbors’ big New Holland tractor across our field, and then, for reasons I could not have anticipated in any rational way, the next morning I was.

Generally speaking, I believe we all know more than we think we do.