Cutting the Corn

Even as there is an apple crispness to these early autumn mornings, there is a softness to the day, to the wide land as summer's burst-to-bloom breathes a sigh that its work is finished and autumn's burst-to-glory can now take over.  The day lilies are gone.  The herb garden is in tangles.  The land, too, is softening even as it readies itself for its big show this month ... as summer's array turns to early autumn's disarray ... as youth's enthusiasm becomes maturity's last hurrah before its quietude.

Many days I walk out beside the West River--the water on one side, a corn field on the other.  Out to where early spring reveals old bittersweet berries and curls of wild grape clinging to leafless trees--the river a steely blue with as many ripples as the national debt.  Sometimes, late spring, I see a man in a red canoe fishing as birds chirp and frogs click.  Or a north-bound freight toots and, though it crosses the river down a ways, my legs seem to reverberate.  By early summer, the sun beams down on me.

River on one side, corn field on the other

But no matter what time of year, my eyes turn to that corn field.  I study it as the snow melts, it turns soggy, and Canada geese come and prowl.  If I'm lucky, I watch it being plowed, harrowed, planted.  I look for the first shoots.  By the 4th of July, I check that the corn's knee high.  And then I spend the rest of the summer watching it grow tall and sturdy.  (And though ears appear, no one picks them, for this is field corn, not sweet.  It doesn't end up in a farm stand's display baskets.)  Mid-to-late September, I witness the cutting.  It always takes a few days.

Before the cutting begins

Now, not long afterwards, you can see the cutting has started

Here he comes ...

After two or three more circuits

Finishing up for the day

But beforehand, sometime in early September, something else gets there first.  I can trace its path--along an animal "slide" from the river up to the road, across the road, and into the fields where it rummages, cuts, and hauls, leaving tell-tale stalks in its wake as it then returns river-ward.

Evidence of something rummaging in the field ...

... dragging the stalks across the road

... then using this burrowed-out path to slide back down to the river.  (Though this looks like an uphill shot, it's really a downhill shot.)

I once stopped a woman with a little white dog coming my way.  "I have a question," I said and pointed to the burrowed-out path.  "What animal is making this?"

"Oh, it's the river beaver," she told me ... cousin to the beaver that dams streams and creates ponds. "It builds its lodges down by the river.  You can see them if you ever paddle along here."

It times its lodge-building perfectly--after the stalks have attained a golden tinge and have dried a bit but before the farmer starts cutting.

By now, the first of October, both workers have finished their tasks.  The lodges are built; the corn is cut.  The field is now stubble.  And though the air is still soft, soon enough a fierce wind will come whistling down the river.  And everything will turn the colors of raw sienna, raw umber, or pewter grey--shadows, tree trunks, twigs, fluff, seed heads, bare branches, dead curled leaves.

Finished

I never tire of watching the process.  I always look out for the corn cutting.  By both the river beavers and the farmer.