This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack for the fourth week of middle fall, the first week of the Robin Migration Moon, the second week of the Sun in Scorpio, the season of the last of the best of the autumn colors.
Throughout the northern part of the United States, this week is usually a crossroads between peak leaf color and sudden leaf fall.
Depending on the year, this week begins a time when high-pressure systems become more powerful as they move across the country. Highs loom higher on graphs of barometric pressure and then plunge more violently low, often bringing bitter winds and snow, and then hard freezes.
Under the Robin Migration Moon, great flocks of robins and other birds follow the river valleys into the states that still keep their foliage for a few weeks longer. In a few more weeks, they finally find their way into the warm Gulf region.
Almost all the wildflowers have wilted by now in the North. Most gardens have ceded or soon will bow to frost.
And so this is, in a way, the last phase of the old year. After the final leaves come down, and after the honeysuckles drop their foliage in the undergrowth, the vigil for winter and spring begins, a virgin time of waiting and planning, when everything still is possible.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the first week off Late Fall. In the meantime, be of good cheer. The end is only the beginning.
