It’s a beautiful sight.

The harvest moon, a luminous orb swimming in a purple, starlit sea.  

Time to think and time to rest.

A time for messing around, leaning back in the bathtub, horse tank or creek up to the neck, watching the clouds float by, or listening to the whispering leaves , while taking vicarious pleasure from a good safari writer , such as Peter Capstick or Jack O’ Connor.

The warm early fall afternoons were not designed for anything more strenuous than fishing or scouting for game.

We have passed the height of Dog Days, the high noon of the year beneath a sultry sun glowering with furnace intensity.

It’s a time of animal transition from youth to adulthood , when a year’s first gray hairs begin to appear.

Psychologists suggest that when man reaches his 40 th or 50 th birthday , he tends to go into a form of shock, even disavowing the facts of life by dying his hair, taking to wearing cosmetics, even consuming pharmaceuticals as if vim and vigor could be replenished via an elixir.

The only practical way to tackle such a melancholy season is to ignore it, pretend it isn’t so.

Sling a hammock beneath the oaks in your back yard, set out the cooler filled with ice and refreshments, lie back, and contemplate the finer things in life : the World Series.

A subtle seasonal change is underway. Deal with it.

Little pulses of cooler air now come gasping out of the Arctic, each with a tad more zest, bringing shifting winds riding the back of moving fronts, stirring summer’s overheated, oxygen depleted streams and forests, breathing new life to anglers and hunters.

Man is by nature a hunter, a warrior.

None of those instincts (according to the playwright) are given much play in our jobs at the warehouse, the office, or the garage.

Consider the Spanish “sport” of bullfighting vs. our rodeos.

The ultimate function of a matador in a bullfight is to make a show of killing a bull with a sword while entertaining the “ spectators .”

Such gory display appeals to baser human instincts, blood sports, as with the Roman gladiators, Man vs. Lion.

While the bull rider in the rodeo also provides a show, in this case the object is not to kill—the bull, which has most of the advantages, is left uninjured, though we can’t always say the same for the rider.

Man is cruel by nature while the goal of civilization is an attempt to uplift, to set higher standards, find loftier values to pursue.

The ultimate answer must be that, while man must kill to survive, be his source of food plant, winged, or hoofed or finned, he and he alone is responsible for his choices.

Some, including the incomparable Huck Finn, call it civilizing.

There are those who are hunters, those who are shooters , and those who try to be both.

Man enters the world empty, his days numbered.

It’s his choices—choices how to fulfill his life—that really count.

Some manage to cram a lifetime of living into a short span of years, while the rest of us bemoan the lack of time to attain our goals.

Some of us drift with the tide and wonder why we missed the boat.

As i n the Romance languages, it is equivalent to “trepalitum,” meaning terrible torture.

Hunting, on the other hand, derives from “seek,” a hope of finding.

As for me, I’ll take hope anytime.

Ultimately, i f you find yourself in the hammock with a good book and a cooler at your side, you might have to justify your flagging energy to your spouse. Suffice it with this: “There’s even a season for idleness, indolence, inertia, sleepiness.”

You can always blame it on the great silver orb shining like the celestial eye of heaven this time of year, the annual harvest symbol that rises just above the treetops and languidly plays with the cloud-ghosts of the purple night sky.

I f the timeless imagery proves too much for our vulnerable egos anchored to the firmament below, we can always reach into the cooler and yank out another cool beverage to fortify our spirits.

Just be sure to pick up your empties and bottle-caps.

No use jeopardizing the seclusion of an autumnal Shang-Ra-La just by being a slob.

After all, if things look good on top, there’s no reason for anyone to go digging to find out what is underneath.  

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