​The Maze.
As the fall sets in, and the harvest season comes to an end, and the days grow shorter and cold, folks once again begin to fire up their wood and coal burning stoves, and fireplaces. Wood is being split, and the pieces stacked and covered for the long winter ahead. For some, cast iron pots, and coffee percolators, find their way out of the closet, and back onto the top of the hot metal furnaces. Canning, and preserving the homegrown bounty, is in full swing. The smell of the summer grill, slowly changes to the wafting fragrance of smokers curing meat, pies baking in ovens, and spiced apple cider brewing in the witches kettle. Harvest parties, costumes, bobbing for apples, and hayrides draw in people from every walk of life, welcoming the slow onset of Autumn.
Pools and beaches, once over run with sun bathers and swimmers, now closed. Shorts and flip flops put away, until old man winter is too tired to wreak havoc on us and goes back to sleep. City folks flocking back to the suburbs, not to the lakes and rivers to cool off, but to the fields and orchards, to pluck the last apples off the tree's, and to prepare for Halloween and thanksgiving, buying the colored Indian corn, gourds of all shapes and sizes, hay bales and cornstalks, and of course those wonderful bright orange pumpkins, to make jack o' lanterns and pumpkin pie. Rural country folks working hard picking the goodies and loading the trucks, and hauling their produce to sell at markets and stands, that dot the roadside in towns across the nation.
Fields just a month ago filled with green vegetation, now tilled under again to dirt, and readied for the winters sleep. A few fields however, yellowing cornstalks left, and cut into intricate mazes, where folks come and enjoy getting lost, and miraculously finding their way to the end. I remember when I was in my early twenties and met my wife in one such maze.
I was stuck and couldn't find my way out. I kept hitting dead ends. I finally got down on my hands and knees and stuck my head through the stalks. There was this girl in the next row. She was beautiful. She was also stuck at a dead end. She was a little upset and had tears in her eye's. I crawled through and stood up. It's okay I told her. I'm lost too. We can do this together, I know we can. It took us all day, but finally we made it out. I think we got out the way we came in, at least that is how it felt. We talked the afternoon away lost in the maze. We became fiends in just a few hours. I kissed her on the cheek and said goodbye. Here is my phone number she said, I'll be looking forward to hearing from you soon. Who would have ever thought that we would have found true love there. We were married a year later.