LABOR DAY COLD FRONT

In this place, the crosshairs of the Canadian border and the Rocky Mountains, a cold front nearly always arrives over Labor Day weekend. Most times snowfall puts an organdy frill on the mountains that is gone by lunchtime but felt, nevertheless. The teenagers cling to their shorts and flip-flops, so that administrators must force them into school clothes, but others are willing to put away white shoes and hunters shake out their camouflage.

The light is quite changed. What had been pink and fuzzed with smoke, softened and peachy with ripeness, has been starched overnight to stiff white brightness. The sky is back to deep blue. The leaves that were here and there yellow will turn now to long foothills of golden aspen, trembling paper money in the wind. Not a breeze for which to be grateful but a chill that says, “Sweater?” At night the cats come into the bed to get warm. Also for safety. There are roamers in the night, restless out there in the dark.

We’ll have Indian summer, of course. This is Indian country. People will check their supplies and do the bits of repair they’ve been putting off. The grain farmers know what their checkbook balances are now -- which doesn’t mean profit but rather the level of their debt to the bank -- and will be baling straw for a little extra cushion.

Shall I abandon the tomatoes, which didn’t get around to forming fruit until a week or so ago? What about the squash, with the ends burned black from drought when the town mother hens forbad watering? The hollyhocks are down to one last blossom on one last wand of a stem. It’s a pink one, like thin flesh. Now the achillea/yarrow is coming into its own. Why didn’t I plant more of them? But I’m not really thinking of what’s out there now. I’m thinking about small bulbs planted among my stepping stones. Blue ones. There are a host of kinds, many related to the wild flowers on these high slopes. Fritillaries, scilla, bluebells, crocus, erythronium. Stuff that blooms as the snow leaves in spring.

The neighbor across the street has a pontoon float boat for fishing that he was evidently keeping to use this long weekend, probaby at Tiber Dam. It talks. There’s a little machine on board that looks for fish and keeps track of the time. During my last dreaming sleep-time in the morning it says, “Fish leaving. Fish leaving. Fish leaving.” My metaphorical dream mind translates that into strange things.

One minute I want to grab the spade and make some changes. The next minute I’d rather paint. After that I end up sitting with a novel. The world goes on without me. Bugs are fewer, already through making egg cases and dormant in crevices. The volunteer tree starts I didn’t cut off are more than a yard tall. I think I’ll leave them.

A flock of transient blackbirds comes through my big tree, the one I watch from my reading chair. Like a school of fish going through seaweeds, like a pack of needles threading holes in fabric, like thrown shuttles joining warp to woof, they travel fast and flashing. I smile. Don’t have to teach. My cousin says she lies in bed in the morning, sees the school buses going up her street, and smiles. She doesn’t have to teach either. We’re free to learn. Our Labor Day is over. We’re ripened.