With summer’s spirit still lingering in my thoughts, Fall is muscling her way into them. It’s a visual time when change is never more apparent than now. Awareness is heightened as my surroundings of deep green fade from the flora’s coats, and petals of red and yellow and purple drift gently toward the parched earth.

Before I let go of summer’s hold, I will remember it as a great time for looking. We looked for places to go and for people to see. We looked to keep busy with the rhythm of the long hours of the day, swimming strokes in the pool, swinging golf clubs, and pedaling bikes. The air, thick with humidity and warmth, allowed for sandals on our feet and T-shirts on our backs. There was no other time but the present.

But now the Earth has tilted. It’s not because the planet is warming, or our climate is changing. It’s because of the fall season. The Fall Equinox, when there’s 12 equal hours of daylight and night, passed on September 22, and now transition is upon us, of shedding a robust summer blanket of color and heat, of sinking sun and lights out fireflies, of quieting tree frogs and crickets. As the sun settles lower, the long arms of century’s old oaks and pines cloak my front and back yards in subtle light flashes. When vivid colors of daisies and coneflowers and roses reached high in greeting bright light that fed them, their brown heads have now fallen.

Recently walking along a shaded path through a nearby forest called for observation at a clearing beyond. I stopped to wiggle my sight through the growth. Bright sun illuminated the distance. I thought about how my summer’s looking has stopped, and I have transitioned to observing where I recognize more space in the beyond, spreading into the landscape. I wrote about observing on a previous post. When we observe, our senses are engaged as we look for more than that which is in front of us. When we also may realize the absence of nature sounds, except for the squawking of geese passing overhead in migration, and the quieting of rustling sounds as spent leaves float to their resting place.

I think of fall in terms of stages. At the first signs of a changing season, green fades into yellow. Next, the peaking of colors in vibrancy of orange and red and deep burgundy. Until the last stage, like the final scene in a drama, the big reveal of forest architecture, the bones of each tree naked and falling into deep slumber. It’s the resolving of a year’s story, after a climax of summer, for Mother Nature to ready herself for winter as a closing curtain to the year’s end. 

Fall is a symbolic season as it mirrors the transitions in our own lives, calling for us to embrace the shifts, to let go of what we feel may no longer be best for us and to hold dear the beauty in the temporariness of life.

Perhaps fall is also nature’s way of teaching us to look ahead, to see that there is light beyond, to not be complacent, but to keep moving forward. To always keep reaching despite the loss of a strong sun from the earth’s angle.

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” – Albert Camus.

Until the Winter Solstice . . .

“Wild is the music of autumnal winds amongst the faded woods.” – William Wordsworth

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