The wheel continues to turn as the shy muted earth tones of summer slowly emerge from the exuberance of spring.
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I feel this everywhere today as I walk across deep beds of fading and desiccated oak flowers, strewn across the forest floor, the jetsam of a wild silvan party.
The leaves of these great trees are drifting around me like the onset of some preternaturally early autumn.
At ground level the flowers are broadcasting millions of seeds or retreating into underground tubers and bulbs, they are storing the energy of life ready to meet the winter rains.
Here in Andalucia the summer is a time of slumber, where most life pulls away from the intense heat and formidable dryness.
In each place every ecology presents its own unique adaptations and here on the mountain all of those structures that allow for moisture loss are now closed down or shed.
This is not a time of death, rather it is a drawing in and down, a long meditative pause in the great hoop of life.
Photo: Quercus suber flowers. Courtesy of the author.