Squirrels running around like crazy storing acorns understand. A cache of seeds is as reassuring to them as a stocked freezer is to us when winter storm warnings fill the 10 o'clock news. It's all about hoarding energy this time of year. Even in this brown and brittle stage, they're sunlight under our feet, sunlight headed down into the soil to feed blind, groping roots. A brilliant seriousness charges the air.
Birds understand it.
So do butterflies and spiders. It would be intolerable if this sense of having so much to do were to descend on us during the summer doldrums, when even collecting the last fruits from the garden looks like too much to do. We would go mad, be torn apart, if this urgency to get things done possessed us at the same time we were also overcome by the steamy lassitude of late summer. Instead, a zephyr blows in from somewhere and suddenly, our spirits are as refreshed as a well, after the rains have come and a dusty drought has been broken. We become like seeds ourselves, looking for places to go, bursting with energy, full of a job to be done, attuned to some whispering future.