Southern Windows, 667 words, Sept. 4, 2000
By Dalton Roberts
IPS Features
For the time in a year, I felt the first nip of fall in the air today. It brought a tiny shiver of excitement. As much as I love the other seasons, fall is my favorite time of year.
Each fall the melody and words of a wonderfully soulful song written by Redbird Clingan of Ringgold, Georgia start echoing around in my mind:
Green grass, turning brown
Leaves falling to the ground
Every fall it seems I fall in love
Her beauty is in the trees
Sweet perfume in the breeze
I heard the lonely call of a Turtle Dove *
Humming that song each fall, I realize that consciously or unconsciously, we all build certain rituals into the celebrations of our seasons. For years Thanksgiving was the one and only time of year my brother, sister and I returned home to have dinner with our parents. Now that they are gone, memories of those precious times together lay like layers of honeycomb in my mind.
It was an unconscious celebration to me in my younger years but as time visibly changed all of us, I intentionally cultivated my awareness and savoring of this annual soul food. Rituals practiced without conscious relishing can be robotic and devoid of spiritual substance.
One of my favorite fall rituals is cleaning the nests in my birdhouses. Sometimes there are pangs of sadness when I find eggs that didn’t hatch. I wonder if a cat or hawk struck or if they were driven somewhere else to homestead by larger territorial birds. Last fall I found a tiny young skeleton in one of my bluebird boxes and paused to give it a decent burial.
Sometimes in the fall my son flies from Dallas to Knoxville and rents a car to experience leaves changing colors in the Great Smoky Mountains. He likes the economic climate in Dallas but hungers for this old seasonal technicolor ritual.
Community leaders in the large urban area where I live were searching for an activity to bring people together and foster a sense of community. They brought back the fall county fair with harvest exhibits, crafts, music and all the time-tested activities for maximizing participation of young and old. Some said it was too old-fashioned to catch on but it has been a blazing success, even in the years the weather has not been cooperative. "Old-fashioned" often means treasured memories of old rituals, called forth like Lazarus from caves of our collective past.
Again this year I will be performing at the Tennessee Fall Homecoming at the incredible Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee, from October 12-15. Even if I was not performing, I would be there. For anyone with rural roots, it is a four-day trip back in time. It is one of the nations most authentic old-time mountain, craft and music festivals involving over 400 musicians and Appalachian mountain folk. This year, five National Heritage award winner will be there – the most ever assembled at one event.
From sun-up until sundown there is music on three stages with the aroma of pots of pinto beans and turnip greens floating all over the grounds. Over here someone is shoeing a horse, over there someone is making molasses at a mule-drawn mill, over yonder there is rail splitting and rail fence building and artists are drawing and painting all over the place. There’s leather working, pumpkin carving, wheel thrown pottery, wood carving, mountain whittling, spinning and natural dyeing, basket making, quilting, chair making, herbal soap making, and if you’re feeling a little peaked look for Doc Randall’s Ole Time Traveling Medicine Show.
After you eat all that good country cooking from woodburning stoves and open kettles, and chase it with a cup of Sassafras Tea, chances are you won’t even need Doc Randall’s nostrum. There’s also a good chance it will become one of you mellow fall rituals.
*Autumn’s Lullaby by Redbird Clingan, used by permission of Happy Doghouse Music, BMI
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