The grasshopper who sang and danced all summer now lays eggs and dies before the cold of winter. The insect’s disappearance from the natural scene inspired Aesop’s fable in which the grasshopper fritters time away while the ant works to build a house and store food. Later, when the grasshopper realizes that winter is coming, he turns to the ant for help. In some versions the ant gives a cold shoulder and sends the grasshopper away. In gentler versions, the ant shares its food and shelter in return for the grasshopper providing music all winter long.

The fable is frequently taken as a morality tale of the value of hard work and the sin of sloth. But I like to think that perhaps the ant realized that the grasshopper wasn’t likely to live out the winter and as a result felt compassion.

We wrap so many illusions around ourselves to protect us from the brutal fact that from the moment we are born, we are dying, so that when the knowledge hits us, we burn with a sense of the precious brevity of each life. Compassion stirs for all of us who face the same condition. Our hearts warm toward other people, we clearly recognize their needs and pain. True compassion, then acts to do whatever is possible and necessary to relieve the suffering of others, and ourselves.

This is the one great lesson of life, the one I understand from the fable of the ant and the grasshopper.

September puts forth towering sunflowers and acres of asters in lavender, purple, and white. The full power and glory of the earth comes to fruition as trees bow with fruits and nuts pregnant with new life. The tasty wrappings encourage the spread of seeds. Confident of spring, plants commit to the future.

Animals, too, take the ever-shorter days as a signal to action. They mate, migrate, and feast to fatten up for the coming hard times. Sometimes we feel a similar rush to action. The beginning of fall, with the new school year, frequently feels like the time to reflect, reconnect, and make resolutions. We feel an urge to start fresh and get our lives in order.

Today, make a list of all the things you’ve always wanted to do. Maybe you’ve always wanted to study Chinese or make preparations for a trip to Patagonia or take a class in Greek cooking or join a group practicing Christian centering prayer. Write out your list quickly, freely, and without editing. Then slowly go through the items to find the one activity that speaks closest to your heart. Now, take the family calendar and block out time to do it. This may be as little as fifteen minutes first thing in the morning or two hours once a week. Somewhere in between the kids’ soccer practice and ballet lessons, your date night with your husband, your office staff meeting, you can find time for yourself.

Lazing on a warm fall afternoon, I look up toward the sky and see a rain of wispy filaments, sparkling iridescence when the sun shoots through them. It is raining spiders.

The long filaments are the same material as the spiders use to build webs, now released from their bodies to catch on the breeze like lifelines. These may be young spiderlings, or adult males, floating to the ground in a mode of travel called ballooning.

Spiders are as seasonal as migrating birds, each species appearing and disappearing at certain times of the year. The type called orb weavers drape their classical circular webs across trees and shrubs in the fall to catch insects the same way fishers net fish. By late October, the orb weavers will have disappeared.

As I laze and gaze at ballooning spiders, I think about how small they appear to me. Then I take an imaginary step into outer space, and think about how small human life might appear. If there is life in space, as increasing evidence indicates, it is rather impossible to believe that it will be exactly like us. More likely, it seems this alien life form will either be on a much lower level of evolution than we are—perhaps more like spiders—or on a much more advanced level of evolution—and we will appear to be the equivalent of spiders. What would a much more advanced life form tell us?

Once the calendar turns to September we feel like summer is over in the Northern Hemisphere. School, work, and social life take off again, and we lose some of that mellow summertime spirit. But the change of the season doesn’t actually occur until the twenty-first of the month, and frequently the weather is still mild.

With everybody’s busy schedule, though, you might have to make a point of setting aside time to enjoy the remaining mild weather. A daily half-hour stroll outside can help you maintain some of your relaxed, summertime attitude, even in the midst of a stressful day. There is always a different wave to ride in the streams of tension levels, if you only look for it.

Your idea of your self-importance, your personal freedom, your relationship to the forces of nature and other people, as well as your place in the cosmos all affect how much stress builds up in your body. When you identify yourself very narrowly with the limits of your own mind, forgetting you are part of the world of matter and nature, quite naturally you will be disappointed, frustrated, and angered when things don’t go your way.

If, on the other hand, you understand yourself as joined to a grand  process of Nature, and able to control only a very small part of the world, you might infuse your life with new meaning and joy, much like you feel during the carefree days of summer.

They are hypnotically beautiful, though they have no eyes, ears or even head. They affect almost everything that lives in the ocean, but they have no heart, which they don’t much need, because they also don’t have blood. They are among the most numerous, effective and ingenious predators on Earth, but they have no brain. We call these creatures jellyfish, though they aren’t fish, and they aren’t made of jelly.

They dangle stinging tentacles to capture tiny zooplankton to eat. Jellyfish are admirable predators, even against other jellyfish. Researchers sometimes find one jellyfish wrapped up inside another, and even see the victim’s victim, a krill it was eating when its dinner was so abruptly ended.

The giant purple jellyfish, which recently visited the shores of San Diego, can measure three feet across and dangle thirty-foot tentacles. The local beachgoers, naturally, considered the visitors pests. Like most of us, they didn’t like giant, purple, slimy stinging things in their swim water and on their beaches.

Nonetheless, jellyfish, large and small, live in our world, perform valuable functions in our seas, and have been doing so for 600 million years. Jellyfish are like an annoyance we would rather forget about, but when we try that, we only become shocked when it returns again and again. If you accept the presence of difficult occurrences in life, and jellyfish on the beach, you are one step closer to coping with the reality if and when it arrives.

On certain hot, dry days it seems as if the whole world is holding its breath. Recently, scientists have discovered that, in a way, it is. The hot, dry conditions drive ponderosa pine forests to shut down and stop absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. The inhale and exhale of the planet pauses.

Like the animals of the Earth, the plants are always on edge, continually monitoring their environment to avoid danger or increase their chances of survival. Dissatisfaction with the state of things is a very condition of life on Earth. Only rarely do we feel satisfied: immediately after a meal, sex, a promotion, or winning a competitive game, for example. The feeling lasts a brief while, until another desire or discomfort arises. A good meal can lead us to look forward to another one. Powerful lovemaking can create a desire for more of the same. A big score seems only to raise the ante for the next one. Although most of us reading this book live with abundance and security, we have a hard time relaxing.

The next time you find yourself anticipating an event in the future, try to explore the emotion behind it. You may be feeling anxious, or afraid, or angry. Then try backing down from the emotion into a breathing meditation, even if only for a minute or two. Disconnect, relax, and you may find that you are happier with the here and now than you thought you were.

Though pine trees are evergreens, they still shed worn-out leaves each year. In many parts of the Northern Hemisphere, pine needles begin to fall off the trees in August. Left in place, the pine straw provides mulch for the trees to protect them from cold and to help retain moisture, and eventually breaks down and releases organic matter into the soil. But the pine straw can be a fire hazard, too, and in many areas homeowners are required to rake the straw away from their homes. When I lived in the mountains, we raked and burned the pine straw each fall. Now, it seems that the straw can be put to use.

Pine straw is gaining in popularity with landscapers who prefer it to bark nuggets or wood chips because the pine straw stays put better, especially in a rain. Builders like to lay down pine straw at their construction sites to prevent damage to the soil from the heavy equipment.

We keep finding new uses for Nature’s bounty. Even the needles the pine tree discards can give birth to new life.

The earthworms that herald spring become less visible in summer. If the season is dry, the worms will burrow deeper into the ground, as much as six feet. If the season is particularly wet, one Asian species of earthworm is known to climb trees to escape drowning. In some regions, you may see the earthworms moonbathing.

The cool, damp evenings draw them to the surface. To catch a glimpse of them, though, you must walk softly and quietly. Earthworms can’t see, but they are exquisitely sensitive to the vibrations of sound and motion. You’ll find them hanging out by their holes, usually with their tails still underground. They’re just lounging under the moonlit sky. Even the busy earthmovers need to take a break, now and then.

How much time do you allow for just hanging out, without feeling guilty about it?

While we generally think that delving deeper into life yields the most satisfying rewards, there are creatures who succeed by skittering along the surface. A handful of animals walk on water. One of the most adept is the fishing spider, which can walk, gallop or even sail across the pond or stream. Fishing spiders lurk along the edges of the water waiting for insects to drop, then flit across the surface to attack. At a walk, they can cover a foot per second, and at a gallop they travel three times as fast. But when they really need to get somewhere fast, like when a predator hunts them, they raise their bodies to the wind and sail.

By remaining on the surface, these tiny creatures accomplish one of the most ancient miracles: they walk on water. In the same way, sometimes we can miraculously answer a question or solve a problem, just by keeping it on the surface of our minds. By applying persistent, but light attention to the issue, we can cross the water and reach the other side.

Early morning light spills across the mountain meadow like water flowing from a basin. Warming my hands around a mug of coffee, I sit quietly alone at a campground table. From a hole in the ground, up pops a long-tailed weasel. It stands on its hind legs, gleaming brown and sleek, showing its white underbelly.

I am not very interesting to it. Rather, it pivots its long, snakelike head from side to side, scanning the grass. The weasel is the epitome of alertness, vibrating with life, the essential relationship between itself and Nature. Weighing less than a pound, the weasel controls events around it with sureness and frequent success, regardless of the size of its enemy. One observer saw a hawk swoop down and seize a weasel in its claws. As the hawk flapped away, its flight became erratic and it tumbled to the ground. The witness found the dead hawk with the dead weasel’s teeth still sunk in its chest.

Now, the weasel darts away from me, chasing a mouse into its hole. I cup my hands a little tighter around my coffee mug, as I imagine the struggle occurring beneath the ground. With a lifespan of a mere eighteen months, the weasel does not have a moment to waste. Its urgency speaks to me as a challenge. Am I alert to the life surrounding me today?