Autumn
The air is crisp, smelling of mold and earth, fallen leaves and dreams. It is October, a fine month for everything whether young or old, human or animal. The wind is stronger than usual, blowing the crimson, gold, and brown leaves into eddies as if some elemental was trying to take form and offer you a wish. The season is one of contrasts and change. Life yields inevitably to decay and death.
For some strange reason most of the people I know say Autumn is their favorite season of the year. If you ask them why they usually say the cold air is invigorating, filling their bones with an energy of a twelve year old with the dreams to match. It does not matter if you’re seventy years old, you still kick the leaves or shuffle through them as a giant monster crushing Tokyo underfoot. In all of us there is a little boy that wishes to lie in a pile of dead leaves, smelling the rich loam and reading books filled with adventure.
The verdant green of Summer has changed his visage to the Golden God of Autumn; resplendent in his cloak of ever-changing colors. By degrees the cloak becomes more threadbare and the trees resemble skeleton hands clawing at a graying sky. The season of the white cold will be upon us and we sometimes cling to the notion that the coming Winter is death. You could not be more wrong. Autumn is the season of magic, of mysteries, of wonders constantly unfolding before your eyes. But its quick; blink and you’ll miss it.
Fear not the winter, for it is not death. It is life. Like a newly pregnant woman, you see nothing but under the surface, life is germinating; waiting patiently for the warmth of Spring when once again life will bloom underfoot and the cycle will start again.
With the days growing shorter, I find myself walking in a world of faeries, the fluttering leaves lady Titania’s gown made of lace and silk, her laughter ripples the air making the air shiver. Overhead the migrating geese sound forth the call to all creatures of feather to take flight and heed the urge to move onward to better destinations. The squirrels scurry amongst the patchwork of dead, brittle leaves, scouring the earth for Falls hidden treasure that they may bury them.
Household cats feel the shift in the balance of the quarters and bother their owners opening one door after another in the never-ending hunt for the door into Summer, the doorway leading into one more day of warm sunbeams to sleep in. Failing that, they spend more time in our laps, doing their best to mimic the earths hibernation that is speeding inexorably forward.
We too feel natures call and wind down, spending our times reading or writing.
Truth be told, we need the winter ourselves to better contemplate what we have done the last nine months; what we’ve accomplished, the friends made, the ones lost. Like misers we tally up what we have stored in the grainhouse of our minds and souls after a solid years work. And we smile as we sip at the cup of hot chocolate or spiced wine, content in what we’ve done the last year. The small things count in that tally.
We hug our cats so fiercely that they purr and we feel for a moment the awe that it’s prey feels the instant before we die. Delight at the memory of that first day of Summer when the ginger ale burns down our throats; the oil on the surface of skin with a feel like something imported from Baghdad by Aladdin himself. Wrapped in the comfort of this years memories, we can wait the long cold winter.
