Learning to Notice
September is a month you can miss if you aren't paying attention.
In the Texas Hill Country, it rarely arrives with crisp mornings and sweaters. The calendar may insist autumn is coming, but the thermometer remains unconvinced. The change is quieter than that. The light falls differently. Grasses that were green begin turning gold. Flowers fade and seed heads take their place. Shadows stretch a little earlier across the limestone. Birds seem to have opinions about things we haven't noticed yet. Every once in a while, usually early in the morning, the air changes just enough to make you stop and think: There you are.
Fall isn't here. But it is coming.
As a child, I was taught to look at illumination. Not simply light, but what light does to the thing we're looking at. Perhaps that's why Monet has always been so compelling. He could return to the same water, the same garden, the same haystacks again and again because they were never truly the same. Morning changed them. Fog changed them. A breeze changed them. The angle of the sun changed them. The subject stayed put. The light did not.
Pedernales Falls makes the lesson impossible to miss. The limestone remains, but almost everything around it is in motion.
Look up. One evening the sky is crowded with enormous summer clouds catching pink and orange at sunset. Another night it is nearly cloudless, leaving all the drama to that thin line between daylight and dark. As summer gives way to fall, the changing sky alters not only what is above us, but the color of everything below.
Look at the trees. Green becomes gold, rust and brown. Leaves disappear and branches emerge. Months later, almost imperceptibly at first, green quietly begins again.
And watch the river. It can tumble white over limestone, rage muddy brown after heavy rain, retreat into isolated pools during dry weather, or become so clear and blue-green that trees and sky appear again on its surface. Sometimes the water is the subject. Sometimes the limestone. Sometimes the trees. Sometimes it is simply the light.
The place remains familiar. The picture never does.
Monet returned to his subjects because there was always something new to see. Pedernales offers the same invitation: Come back. Look again. What changed? Perhaps the season. Perhaps the weather. Perhaps only the hour. And sometimes, of course, the thing that changed is the person looking.
Van Gogh seemed to understand another kind of illumination. He gave his attention to things we might easily walk past. A field. Hay lined up waiting for winter. Oak branches. A chair. A starry night sky. Ordinary things became extraordinary because someone stopped long enough to really look at them.
There is something useful in that. Modern life encourages us to look for spectacle. Bigger. Faster. Newer. Something worthy of photographing and showing someone else. Nature is much less accommodating. Some of her best work requires us to sit still.
A deer standing absolutely motionless until you suddenly realize she's been watching you. A bird calling from somewhere in the trees, and the small satisfaction of finally finding it because you stayed with the sound long enough to separate it from all the others. The first wildflower appearing where yesterday you were certain there was nothing. The smell of rain before the rain arrives. The astonishing amount of activity that begins when humans finally become quiet.
None of these things are particularly rare. That's the interesting part. We simply don't always see them.
The other evening, I was going about an ordinary day when I suddenly realized it was almost dark. How did that happen? I thought I was staying up too late and then looked at the clock. It was only 8:30. The evening had slipped farther along than I expected. The light had changed while I was busy with other things, and I had nearly missed it.
That's September. Not the exuberance of spring or the blazing declaration of a Texas summer. A transition. A month of small signals.
At Flint & Flowers, September invites questions. What's blooming? What's finished blooming? Who is visiting the flowers? What has gone to seed? Which birds are passing through? When did the grasses turn that particular shade of gold? What time does the evening light begin changing everything it touches? And when was the first night you sat outside and realized you didn't want to go back in?
Perhaps that's September's invitation. Not to do something. To notice something.
Make your coffee and take it outside. Leave your phone behind, and let your mind—or better, your heart—remember the moment. Listen long enough to separate one bird from another. Watch where the light lands. Look at what's growing beside your feet before looking toward the horizon. Stay outside after sunset and let your eyes adjust to the dark. Look at the same thing tomorrow. It may not look the same at all.
My father gave me the tiniest slip of paper when I became a mom, probably cut as a label for his artifacts and written in his distinct handwriting. It said, "life is a journey, not a destination." Perhaps noticing is the biggest part of the journey. No matter where we are, there is illumination if we remember to look for it. The light travels with us.
Somewhere between summer and fall, the Hill Country quietly begins becoming something else. And if we're paying attention, we get to watch.
Inspired by What Grows Wild.
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