Connected While Apart
Color

an autumn palette

Dear Mayfield,
The pandemic has altered, upended, and eliminated, at least for the time being, so much that brings joy to our lives.  I have found that it’s helpful to be especially aware of what I treasure that persists despite everything happening in 2020.  I will confess that autumn has been my favorite season since I was a child.  I like everything about it, every sensory experience that it holds. For me it is a season of magnificent color.  Having spent my growing up years in upstate New York and Vermont, I saw some of the best color shows that autumn has to offer.  There is this simultaneous brightening and muting of color across the season.  Think of a brilliant sugar maple or the vivid yellow carpet of a field of soybeans just as they begin to dry out in anticipation of harvest.  Remember the scarlet of sumac and the show-stopping oranges and yellows of pumpkins, squashes, and gourds.  At the same time, week by week, there is a drying out, a shedding, and the emergence of so many shades of brown.

autumn hues

Randy, our filmmaker, pointed out the power of color to me recently.  The original plan for Plants, Pollinators, and Prayers was to have a first ever public celebratory showing of the film about the Mayfield Monarch Waystation on Tuesday night, April 7th at the DeKalb County Farm Bureau.  That showing was swept up in the tsunami of cancellations throughout the first pandemic weeks.  Not long before that, Randy had emailed to me, to Diana, and to Peggy,  a link to the film in its final stages of editing.  We enjoyed having a sneak peek ahead of time.  It was six months later on September 2nd when Randy sent out the private link to me to be passed on to all of you, so that everyone at Mayfield could view the documentary before it debuts in several national film festivals later this month and in October.  September 2nd was a rather full day for me, so I waited to watch it in the quiet of early morning on September 3rd.  I was stunned with how beautiful it is.  I texted Randy and told him I liked what I saw in February but the final version was so incredible.  I could feel him smiling as he texted me back and told me that Diana didn’t believe him when he said that he hadn’t changed anything in what we saw in the September link except for one shot in the credits.  What had happened between February and September was that it had been color corrected, sound mixed, and enriched by the addition of Tyler’s beautiful score.  I was startled by the impact of those three things, especially the color.

Whether you are a fan of autumn or not, take in, inhale, soak up the colors on every side.  If there is a particular one that grabs your heart, offer it thanks.  Store up the great array of color in these weeks.  It will be a steady internal resource you can draw upon during the whites and grays of winter.  Leo Lionni wrote a wonderful children’s story years ago about a gray field mouse named Frederick who did just that and wove the colors into the stories he told his family of mice when their winter food ran low in the stone wall where they sheltered for the season.  And do take advantage of  the visual healing of color across the seasons in Plants, Prayers and Pollinators by September 20th.
Peace, Martha