The morning is beautiful. Cool with touches of warmth as the sun begins to stream through the trees. The air tingles my nose just slightly – a preview of the nose crackling cold that is to come. But not today. Today the air will grow gently warmer until it feels almost like summer – almost but not quite.
No matter what the temperature is the senses know when we have passed into another season. The colors have changed. Reds and pinks and sunny yellows no longer predominate. Shades of purple and wine and deep gold and rust have moved into to take their place. The leaves share their space on the trees with pine cones and seed clusters and those helicopter seeds we love to watch flutter to the ground. The grass is still rich and lush but it is a deeper shade of green. A more mature, more sedate shade. There are a few scattered leaves on the ground that crackle and crunch when we walk about. The unmistakable smell of early fall is in the air.
While all these things tell us that the seasons are changing, I think it is the light that tells us most of all. The sun still rises in the eastern sky at dawn but it rises much further to the south than it did just a few weeks ago. Every day it is a little later. When the rays of light finally come they caress the earth with a deeper shade of gold, lingering low and long on the horizon. The sun seems to rest a bit before climbing up into the sky - as though it's a little tired after all the summertime brilliance.
In the evening, much sooner than I expect it, the sun begins its descent. This time seeming to rush towards the horizon. No lingering now. Just a deep descent into the deep purple shades of the early night.
These short days – still much longer than we will have in only a few more weeks – fill me with a sense of urgency. A need to be outside as much as possible, to complete projects that lay dormant during the summer's heat, to prepare for the winter but also for the spring as I tend my flower beds and plant the bulbs that will greet us when the days begin again to lengthen.
However much we may surround ourselves with artificial environments – with light that goes on and off at will, with heat that can be precisely controlled, with breezes and winds that turn on at the flip of a switch or turn of a dial – I don’t believe we can ever silence the song that sings inside our bodies in harmony with the seasons. Nor do I think we ever should. We are creatures of the Earth. Wherever we may have come from, wherever our souls may be going, we are here now. We should take the time to savor every nuance of each moment that we share with this extraordinary world.
Reflections on Life
