Dearest wild octoberlings, 

If you have been just now in the bush you have been seeing more snakes solitary birds now social (and obviously foxes) wee snapping turtles (lately hatched and yet to harden) gatherings of dragonflies to migrate (or just plain hungry) fungi in the throes of day-glow gigantisms and poets having no time for line-breaks or commas. Between the equinox and Samhain (say it: saw-win) is the time of zugunruhe the autumn toddler pitching a tantrum (at bedtime) the season of restive hubbub when October rolls over to steal the blankets a river’s barefoot dreaming (just yesterday) the only tadpoles left are the big ones (ripe hackberries some plums) later dawns and sooner moons of quietly disquieted sauntering letting nature have the last word as always we must, and do. 

Better get to it,

Jack Phillips

Mid-Ocotober zugunruhe in eastern Nebraska. Giant puffball (Calvatia gigantea), black-footed polypore (Polyporous badius), Douglas County; white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), Saunders County. Photos by Troy Soderberg.