Lytle hwile leaf beoð grene; ðonne hie eft fealewiað, feallað on eorðan and forweorniað, weorðað to duste. A little while the leaves are green; then they wither again, fall to the earth, and die, turn to dust. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle
Mythopoetically, the year may be understood as the winter and summer’s ongoing drum-beat of victory and loss, with grappling-times at the year’s crossroads.
We wrote The Red Feast in the swelter of August, which meant we had fully mentally immersed ourselves in the progression of the autumn only as summer’s grasses were dying; it was almost surreal to watch what we had written come to manifest around us, inevitable though it was.
All of Leodrune’s books thus far have been written from the same home— all that we have written is rooted in the ecology right outside our door. We live within a citified area where much has been paved, but giant evergreens tower over homes all over the neighborhood. Just down the way, as written about in Great Lady Under Earth, is a small forested canyon with a lake at its base, the oldest natural lake in the city. This is where we make our daily pilgrimages, and where we upkeep some our closest relations to spirits of place. This is the canvas upon which we have come to understand the dynamics of the seasons.
I’m now sitting down to write this essay on Friday the 13th of October, and autumn has truly settled in. The Bigleaf Maples have begun to molt, surrendering their yellowed plate-sized leaves to the Earth. The ground is softening, the dust turns to mud. Fat Orb Weavers and Giant House Spiders, among others, proliferate at every junction in the woods— one of many ways the autumn induces little dreads. A Fox Squirrel, not native to this region but common to the city, has a presumably impressive stash of nuts in a hole in the roof of our house, and recently left in a huff after realizing we could see where he had hidden his treasures. Down in the canyon, the indigenous Western Grey Squirrel works hard to prepare as well: Tristan and I were laughing today about the cacophony of nibbling that can be heard from every direction and distance.
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