In the Kingdom of October, early morning fog wraiths hang upon hardwood hillsides of burnt orange and smoldering gold. Overgrown apple orchards, each tree bent and hag twisted by the pitiless years, occupy the valleys. Hawthorn thickets crowd river bottom swales, bushels of their bright fruits covering the rich, fragrant earth.
The Kingdom of October will not appear on your GPS. You’ll find it instead on dog-eared topo maps with faded notes penciled in the margins. Here, whatever it was that had a stranglehold on your spirit begins to loosen its coils.
In the Kingdom of October, vintage shotguns, like old cane fly rods, carry the souls of their makers and caretakers, and the expanse of all the wild places they’ve been.
In the Kingdom of October, it’s tough to tell where fact ends and myth begins. A graveyard borders one of your covers. Spreading beech trees guard its entrance and blanket the earth with copper leaves. You study the lichen-covered, hand-chiseled headstones of Grand Army of the Republic soldiers, mothers carried off in childbirth, children carried off in their sleep, and a few souls who survived well into their 80s and 90s. It sounds naive, but you think you can recognize the world they called home better than the one that confronts you this day and age.
In the Kingdom of October, even backsliders like you are welcome. As you drive down the mountain in the dusk – dead tired, cold, and hungry after hours of fighting through the thickets – yellow light glows softly from the windows of a clapboard hall, drawing you in to a church supper. For a 10-dollar bill you polish off heaping plates of braised ham, beans, mashed potatoes, gravy, roasted chicken, smothered pork chops, and homemade deep-dish apple pie – and get caught up on the local news that never makes the paper.
In the Kingdom of October, you have your Brittany at heel. At 18 months, she can still be wild. So far today she hasn’t just bumped a few grouse, she’s trampled them.
The two of you reach the rim of a swale where the ground drops into a copse of stunted hemlocks stitched together with thick blackberry canes, with a great blowdown oak in the center. The dog stops and you watch her nose work the light breeze drifting up from the thicket. You can see the gears turning behind her eyes. You send her in as you skirt the edge, and you’re happy to see she’s working slowly, tail beating wildly. Her bell falls silent, and she freezes on point.
Twenty yards ahead, where the thicket gives way to open woods, a delicate switch trips inside a grouse’s brain, triggering an explosive flush. For an instant you see this airborne fury in sharp relief – fan spread wide, wings grabbing gallons of air, crested head cocked skyward.
You punch a hole in the leaves behind the bird with the first barrel, but fold it cleanly with the second. The Britt breaks at the shot, rushes in, beating you to the bird by a couple of seconds. You erupt in laughter as she retrieves it about 10 feet to you. Maybe there’s hope for the two of you to make a good team.
In the Kingdom of October, as you head up the carriage road toward the truck, a tide of evening shadows seeps into the folds of the distant hillsides. Spurs and ridgelines stand out in the remaining light. There, many trees are stripped of their leaves now, and you can make out every skeletal branch, squirrel hole, and wasp nest.
For a few long minutes, the last rays of low-angle sun burn deep amber, anointing everything and everyone they touch in liquid gold. Then it’s gone. The cold hand of darkness falls and it’s time to head home.