Introduction
At the beginning of each month I like to locate myself, metaphorically, within what is happening around me: the annual cycles, the celebrations and festivals of the calendar, the arc of the stars, the waxing and waning of the moon and the passage of nature whispered on the wind.
This is the eleventh instalment of a regular monthly almanac I write to share with you. It is, in the main, a figurative contemplation, seasoned with some of the more prosaic anchor points and markers that I personally cherish.
Here we look ahead to the month of October in the year 2024.
Calendar
Wednesday 23rd October - Scorpio Season
Sunday 27th October - British Summer Time ends (clocks go back one hour)
Thursday 31st October - Samhain
Thursday 31st October - Hallowe’en
Moon Calendar
Wednesday 2nd October - New Moon 19:49
Thursday 10th October - First Quarter Moon 19:55
Thursday 17th October - Full Moon (super-moon): Hunter’s Moon / Blood Moon 12:26
Thursday 24th October - Last Quarter Moon 09:03
Sky Calendar
Monday 14th October - Keep watch after sunset to see a close encounter between Saturn and the waxing gibbous moon.
Wednesday 23rd October - Keep watch after sunset to see a close encounter between Mars and the last quarter moon.
The Rover’s Almanac: October 2024
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,1
October dawns down by the riverside. My head torch goes through the darkness and penetrates the golden whisky-brown water of the River Divie.
I cannot feel the breeze, but I can see it: water particles picked out by the beam of light ride currents of air flowing straight toward me, then around.
The river picks a path through woodland, Scots pine and larch on the bank. There’s a big brae hag2 downstream where the water kicks to the left, forced wide by the many stones it is piling up.
Clouds of steam rise from hot coffee, mixing with condensation from my breath.
Good morning owl, how was the hunt?
Last night an agile bat flittered round in circles inches above the surface of the water, using echolocation to pick off insects. When another joined in they seemed to tussle before one was seen off.
Jupiter emerges directly over my head.
In the distance, the cattle are lowing, sheep bleat back. Buzzard cries.
Strange reflections on the water, the constant sound of river rushing over rock, brown leaves swirl in the eddies.
By early October many leaves have already fallen. They fall by their own weight, for when their summertime tasks are done a jelly-like substance forms at the base of the leaf-stalks and so casts them off.3
The damp fetid sumptuous smell of decay surrounds, but nature still proffers gifts.
October is a fruitful month for seeing mushrooms, especially when damp. My five-year-old North found a Shaggy Ink Cap.4
Both Richard Mabey5 and Roger Phillips6 say it is edible - good while the gills are still white, and ideal turned into a ketchup.7
E. L. Grant Watson, writing in the Ladybird book What to look for in Autumn (1960), does not agree:
…no living things, except maggots and insects, are rash enough to eat the ink-cap toadstool.
As it was still fresh, we considered harvesting it, but in the end, I faltered. My aversion is personal and cultural, stemming from what Terence McKenna calls mycophobia.
You know, cultures can be divided into mycophilic and mycophobic. And mycophobic cultures are like the English, for whom all mushrooms are toadstools, and you should put it down because you don’t know where it’s been. This is the basic English attitude.8
Compared with the mushroom-loving Slavs I am inept. A Czech I know tells stories of foraging in the woods with her mother throughout her childhood. McKenna again:
Well then, Slavs and Celts, there are hundreds of words in these languages for mushrooms. And mushroom outings, and people go out on Saturdays on mushroom forays. In Czechoslovakia, a national bestseller is a guide to the mushrooms of Czechoslovakia. No home can be without it.
The Shaggy Ink Cap stayed in the ground but there is other fruit to be had: hazelnuts are ripening, and walnuts and glossy sweet chestnuts.
My favourite, the horse chestnuts9 are a treasure. There is such tactile pleasure in picking up the spilled shiny brown conkers, feeling them between the fingers. The prickly seed shucks have soft white pith inside, which is sensually smooth when stroked.
We gathered the first hazelnuts before squirrels got to them. The children worked together to harvest, smash open with a hammer, and toast on the log burner. Eleven-year-old Thor, the most naturally inclined cook, took charge of the toasting: seasoning them with salt flakes and plenty of pepper for extra zip and pep.
Blackberries have gone over now and the birds are almost silent, although robin and wren still sing. House martins will be gone by the end of October, following the paths of their predecessors, the swallows and swifts.
Spiders have been mating and the spiderlings are fully grown, casting fine strands across the paths.
September’s fleeting Indian summer has faded and the nights are colder. On the last Sunday in October the clocks go back and British Summer Time ends.
At the beginning of November the cross-quarter Celtic festival of Samhain signals autumn’s end and the beginning of winter, when increasing darkness and wood smoke on the air compels us to accept that the cold hands and warm heart of winter are fast approaching. The veil between the seen world of matter and the unseen world of spirit is thinning. I will peer behind it in next month’s almanac.
Samhain was believed to be a time when natural laws were suspended, and ghosts and demons roamed abroad. This all-important day could not be ignored by the insecure Church, which rededicated the occasion to the saints. It was instituted in AD 835 and called All Saints' Day.
All Souls Night, All Hallows Eve or Hallowe’en was set in the calendar on 31st October, the night before Samhain, to supersede and sideline the traditional pagan celebration.
In Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain, a 1973 Reader’s Digest compendium, a number of romantic superstitions are aligned to Hallowe’en, when a young girl hoped to see the candlelit reflection of her future husband in the mirror. It was possible to discover his initial by throwing a complete apple peel over the shoulder - the letter formed would be the initial of her true love.
A popular Hallowe’en game was to line a hot grate with hazel nuts, giving each the name of a prospective husband, and reciting ‘If you love me pop and fly; if you hate me, burn and die.’ In another variation, the nuts which cracked denoted the fickle suitors.
To guarantee a dream of her future love on Hallowe’en, a young girl could place her shoes in the form of a ‘T’, a potent talisman representing the hammer of the thunder god Thor. She then said, ‘Hoping this night my true love to see, I place my shoes in the form of a T’.
The Old English name for October, winter-fylleð, means winter-full-moon-month. Rise early and she is visible before dawn. Her suitors Saturn and Mars will soon ask her to dance: on the 14th and 23rd October respectively.
The light of the full moon, Hunter's Moon or Blood Moon, will illuminate the landscape on the 17th October. In the past it made for good hunting and killing.
Deer and livestock have fattened up over the summer, making October the time to hunt, slaughter and stock up on meat for winter. The combination of the leaves starting to fall from the trees and the bright light of a full moon would have made for a particularly excellent hunting night.10
Throughout October our bygone kin would have been slaughtering surplus livestock for winter food and mating sheep to provide the following year's stock.
These days, arable and livestock preparations follow similar patterns. October sees the turn of this year’s calves to be weaned and put back into barns before the temperature drops. Ewes will be dipped to avoid infections, and their wool will be clipped around the tail, ready to meet a fully functioning ram, for the tupping.
Arable farmers will drill the winter wheat, in preparation for next year’s crop yield. Potato and sugar beet will be harvested. It's also pumpkin season.
The hedgerows on countryside roads, radiant with red hips and purple elderberries, will be mauled by mechanical flail hedge cutters fixed to slow-moving tractors. Any birds that have not yet abandoned their nests will be in for a nasty surprise.
We gathered around a goodbye bonfire on the campsite recently as we are leaving Scotland: heading south somewhat reluctantly to earn money, work on the van, and visit family.
At our backs as we say farewell to the north the red deer rut is underway in the Highlands and the geese are gathering in their thousands at Findhorn Bay. The further we travel from here, the harder the majesty of Moray will wrench at my heart.
Back in the winter, after we had been in the country a few weeks, a Scot put his hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes, and said, ‘if ever there was a Scottish Highlander in spirit, it’s you’.
I don’t know about that, I don’t have the grit, but ’tis true that part of me will remain forever in the magical northern wilderness of Caledonia: wherever I wander, wherever I rove, my heart’s in the Highlands.
A last word or two then, from Rabbie:
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.11
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To Autumn by John Keats (1820).
A brae-hag, or brae-hauld, is the overhanging bank which has been undermined by a river.
What to look for in Autumn by E. L. Grant Watson, illustrated by C. F. Tunnicliffe, R.A: Ladybird Series 536 (1960).
Also known as Ink Cap, Inkytop, Inkhorn and Lawyer’s Wig.
Food for Free: A guide to the edible wild plants of Britain by Richard Mabey (1972).
Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britain & Europe by Roger Phillips (1981).
The best way with shaggy caps may be to capitalise on their deliquescent nature and turn them into ketchup. Put the young caps into an earthenware jar, pack them down well and strew each layer with salt. When the jar is full put it in the oven, and simmer for an hour or two, being careful not to lose too much liquid by evaporation. Then strain through muslin, and for each quart of liquid add an ounce of black pepper and a scrape of nutmeg. Boil up again, strain into clean (preferably sterilised bottles) and seal well. The ketchup will keep indefinitely, but should be used quickly once opened.
From Food for Free: A guide to the edible wild plants of Britain by Richard Mabey (1972).
History Ends In Green by Terence McKenna: Lecture given at the Esalen Institute, California (1990).
Sweet chestnuts are edible but horse chestnuts are poisonous: they can cause digestive problems such as abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting.
The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to 2020 by Lia Leendertz (2019).
My Heart’s in the Highlands by Robert Burns (1789).