“What’s this?”: a dune-dwelling locust, an ichneumon fly; a slipper shell, a shred of kelp, a spider, a scallop shell ... all parts of a game, novelties. But when will we know how to fit them all together? An impatient teacher might think from these boys, with their degrees of inattention, that the game will never get under way, that the preparation will never end. Yet their own lesson is that readiness is all, and the outcome immaterial. I am only half acquainted with them, although some of their native traits stand out plain to see. In one there is a shade of melancholy transplanted from his father, in another courtesy and gaiety. One is rough and full of the fever of unregulated competition. Another is quiet and slow, or quick and sensitive. Together they share a mystery. They are in active flight like young birds, and at this point, this moment of being, allowed its own growth without real harm or hindrance, they give an offering. It is the act of their unknown selves. They catch some more insects with their nets. They find the bright yellow feathers of a flicker which had been caught and eaten by fox or owl in the beach grass. They identify the remains of a young herring gull washed onto the upper beach. The tide has ebbed and the sands stretch off with glittering lanes and rivulets--gulls stalking in the distance, or resting in white flotillas on the water--and blue salt water curves beyond, over the earth’s perimeter. The October shadows begin to stretch farther down the sands. Light, smoky clouds drift over and a strange little shower of rain comes down, running along the beach, disturbing no one. Then the sun comes clear again, moving westward. Everything we collect, all that we can say about it, is only a start, a suggestion, although each sample leads to all others. We have left a great deal behind. If the north wind roars in again tomorrow, sweeping all warmth away, killing more of life’s visible evidence, or making it cower in the earth, and causing colds and crabbedness in human society, we will still be setting out. _Colors of the Season_ There is yellow and peach pink on the leaves of the red maples, and some of the oaks begin to show signs of changing, but the most colorful plants are the mushrooms. The wet weather has been providential for them, and they have come up in some areas where I cannot remember having seen them before. They thrust mysteriously but stubbornly through the grass in a wide semicircle of white moons. They parade up the side of trees, and across the wood floor their cups or parasols stand comfortably grounded in dead leaves or decaying wood. (We see only the flower of the mushroom protruding above the ground, while underneath lies the complex mat of fine fibers from which they blossom, the mycelium.)