Fields

"That field is already harvested. How did I not notice that? Or did they just do it?"
I felt the familiar distraught panic I developed every fall with the ending of September.
Mourning summer like an old friend.
It was as though over night the lush green corn fields turned to dry yellows,  sporadic like a tie dye shirt,  overtaking it like a disease.
You wake up one morning and have to go back into the house for a jacket and cringe as yet another girl gives an ode to fall by expressing her love of scarves,  crisp air,  and pumpkin spice lattes.
Sometimes I think people don't even know what existing really is but they say they're doing it.
I know I do.
Where does time go?
I'm transported to the image of me coming up over the few hills to my house,  the light soft and the sun going down.
It's so lonely but God,  it's so beautiful.
My horse is munching the last grasses of the summer in his pasture,  tail swinging half heartedly back and forth.
I don't know where my dad buried him,  it's been that long since I've been home.
The chickens are picking at the ground,  searching for goodies in the grass,  scratching at the ground when they find something, talking back and forth to one another in their own way.
My cat is walking down the driveway and slowly dips to the ground to roll on her back.
My dog sniffing around for something only he knows what.
The calves are no longer babies and are beginning to eat hay and corn.
Their cries go on for days when we wean then from their mothers.
It occurred to me that they're like people to the extent that things seem so bad at first . We cry,  get angry,  kick up a storm,  and days later we are back to being okay,  back to the places and things that make us feel comfortable.
Not right away,  but someday.
I miss the farm.
I know I can't go back but there are moments I'm transported by nostalgia to when life was a little bit slower.
Authentic living is how I reflect on it now.
The place I first learned lessons in a simplified and yet complex manner.
I learned about anger when a coyote would eat my favorite chicken.
Justice when I protected one of the ostracized animals and made them safe spaces in their pens.
Joy when a new life came into the world,  from the time their beaks poked through the shell to thriving and reaching adulthood,
Or rubbing my eyes and looking out the window and seeing a fresh,  shiny black calf sticking close to its mother on wobbly legs
Triumph when I stayed on my horse the next time he tried to buck me off.
Sorrow as I held many of my beloved pets as they died.
Loyalty as I cared for the sick and injured.
Duty and respect when caring for an animal until it reached the age where it would be used for food.
Gratitude when eating one.
The lessons were so simple but so profound.
I didn't live at home for the first summer in my life and I felt like time just flew.
I didn't feel fully adequate in fulfilling my newly established adult role in the world.
They say it's the best time,  your 20's, because you're the best physically you ever will be, you're not married and you don't have kids to hold you down.
Somehow it felt a lot like simply existing
Holding a place in time.
There was no richness to make it vibrant.
After recovery and graduation from my undergrad I felt some estrangement from the person I was.
A muted need to become intimately acquainted with myself and the person I am instead of rejecting it for once.
Suddenly I woke up and realized that I would have a professional career and can't waste time with people who care little for me and I them.
I want to call it an apathetic frenzy because that's what it is.
Nothing bad,  nothing good, everything normal.
It's something, I just don't know what yet.
All I know is that I don't want to wake up one day and realize I yellowed and withered like the fields.