Ripe Hour

(Here is a piece I clipped from a newspaper many years ago. It's still beautiful and true. The writer is not indentified.)

After a humid August day when a hot sun has pressed heat on the land, there comes that poignant hour between dusk and darkness when one can feel Year's ripeness.

Time is sliding downhill. Now the shorter days and longer periods of darkness mean that Nature is hastening toward the time of maturity.

When the sun is low above the mountain rim and shadows have started to thicken in the valleys, there is an interlude when one can feel the ripeness. Perhaps it is psychological; perhaps it is man who is in tune with the Great Symphony of the seasons.

But when the countryman walks his acres at day's end in the eighth month, he feels he can sense the ripeness.

Ripeness is a cumulative process. Countless small insects and plants have finished their life cycles earlier in the season. Now it is the beginning of the ripening hour for field crops and fruits.

Stand beside a cornfield on an August evening when the brooding silence is like a blanket and you may think you hear the corn grow. A man cannot hear apples swell nor acorns grow in their saucers, but he knows as he looks at them that growth is occurring and ripeness coming.

This it has been since plants took their places on our earth. Seeds sprout in the magic of humus; they grow to maturity and insure the continuance of the species.

Life goes in its ordained cycle. The Master Planner decrees that after the time of growth there is ripeness. The ripeness of an August evening is a meaningful lesson.

It is not sad. It is part of life.