Autumn Unfolds

Fall is my favorite time of the year. I live in Central Illinois where despite the cold winters, I enjoy the succession of the seasons. If I lived in a place where the seasons never changed, I imagine I would be stricken with a sort of grief.

Change is inevitable, impossible to avoid, and Fall over all the seasons demonstrates this to us. Why? Because Fall is beautiful, more beautiful than the other seasons. In her bright burst before death, Fall heightens the senses, brings us closer to our bodies, refreshes the psyche.

In the arts, Autumn has been depicted by a hare, vine-leaves or a horn of Plenty brimming with fruit. In mythology, the season is sacred to Dionysus, the god of wine.

Every Fall, I become super-sensitive to the two-day interim between the tail end of Summer and the beginning of Fall. I can remember the warmth of the final day, how the clouds looked, and how I felt; and then, I recall the arrival of the first Autumn day and her cold breath on my face.

I am rejuvenated in the cold air, my whole body awakens. As if Summer were only a long slumber. The scents in the air come alive. I can smell the high school bonfires burning before homecoming. And the corn husk after the fields are cleared. The sky appears as if it has been scrubbed clean; provides a stark background for the range of colors in the leaves.

Driving down the tree-lined streets of my neighborhood, I think of golden apples, which is what the trees look like to me.

The succession of the seasons punctuate the rhythm of life. The seasons reflect our own stages from birth, growth, maturity, and decline. If the leaves are able to move us, then perhaps it is because we see a reflection of ourselves in their beauty. Their beauty represents change, alteration, succession. We sense our own fate in the changing of the landscape.

Really the only proper attitude to take toward life is to marvel at it. To marvel and to keep marveling and never to stop.

When my energy returns (and I'll never understand how I lost it), I gain momentum in my thoughts and my emotions and once again I have a passion to accomplish things. When my energy returns, I feel alive again, throbbing with motivation and good ideas. This overflow of energy of course produces an excitement and a desire for more energy, more action, more accomplishment. Sometimes I get too far ahead of myself.

If there is any "work" to be done in nature, I don't see it. What I see in nature is an unfoldment, a succession of events without effort. I wonder if my life can become like that.

As an adolescent I swung between two extremes--an excessive, almost manic self-directedness, in school, sports and social life--or the opposite, which was undirected, amorphous, purposelessness. You watch the seasons and see neither one of these extremes. You watch the seasons and see how life occurs, how nature unfolds.