Turn, Turn, Turn

September 29th, 2021

Autumn is one of my favourite seasons. Actually, I have no favourite season. I just love that I live where we have them. In Spring, I love the warm winds, mud puddles and all the layers of re-emergence; whether from tiny snow drops, skunk scents, or opulent late spring peonies. Summer brings fireflies to spark the night sky (when night finally arrives after the long lingering indigo twilight). There is an intensity of early summer green that nearly hurts my eyes as trees, grass and all things photosynthetic kick into high gear.

Fall has a different quality. For me, as a full time teacher for over 30 years, fall was the official/fiscal start of the new school calendar year. For me, It always feels like the beginning of the yearly cyclical transitions. A New Start.

Of course, Fall also represents the harvest, the reaping of bounty, the time of too many tomatoes and zucchini. Its a time of corn harvesters and wheat combines slowly lumbering through fields and ahead of you on roads. A time of crops cut to be stored for winter feeding.

But for me, it also often brings a feeling of loss. As trees trunks and leaves let go, I'm keenly aware of the passage of time. In rivers around, we hear of salmon returning. In their extinctual excitement to fly up and over their final hurdles, do they process that 'this is it'? Frost is now threatening the late bloomers of the meadows and gardens. Sensitive fern awaits the first frosty temperature to blacken it; allowing it to shrivel back to its root stock.

For everything there is a season. And for some, this fall is where they'll see their last sunset.