Numerous medical sources document the "near-death" experiences of people who have clinically died and then have come back or have been brought back to life.
Many who have had such an experience describe finding themselves in a place of light, a preternatural world of breathtaking beauty. The near-death landscape is full of flowers and leaves of all colors. It is a heavenly landscape of glorious music, with vegetation that glows with the light of eternity.
As attractive as such a place may be, it seems that one might experience this paradise without entering the dangerous liminal zone between life and death.
Here in the first days of Early Fall, the preternatural dimension may appear in the senses of the person who seeks it: sky streaked with scarlet and gold at dawn and sunset, the infinite forms and shades of clouds, the new blooming of the asters and the goldenrod, the heavenly choir of crickets and katydids, the symphonies of the bumblebees in the late zinnias, the light through still verdant leaves that project the green of spring.
The beatific vision of the low autumn sun deepens the colors of time, bridging us, as the need may be, to the other side, or simply revealing the truth of the magical world in which we live.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the third week of Early Fall. In the meantime, avoid a near-death experience. Just be outside, watching and listening.
