The height of a season has passed, and there was no stand
still. The fall, the season that is also a verb, like spring, seems to have
more constant movement than summer or winter. The year’s made of fullness and
stillness, respectively, with movement in between. At the end of August things
seem to be holding at crescendo, a great earthly fermata.
Fall then, is a glissade, the most joyful and active letting
go I know. You can watch it happening, watch a tree go bare, in the right wind,
in an hour. The daylight changes palpably – it’s getting dark at four and the
stars are twinkling by six.
I try not to play favorites, but it seems fall suits my
constitution best. For that reason, my first instinct is to put my hands up,
for everything to stand still, for just a moment. It’s all gone so quickly. Now
we have snow and frost. But then, it’s a relief. It is a beautiful thing indeed
that it is all out of our hands. It’s not my timeline. The green that turns
gold and then mahogany on a beech has nothing to do with me. The squirrels get
fatter on their own accord, I do not have to tell the geese to fly south (or to
stay, for that matter), and the crows and jays know their own cues.
I am not unlike the leaf of a streamside alder, who lets go,
or is let go, depending on how you anthropomorphize things, and tumbles down
and floats along the river’s back. The river, too, millions of droplets, who
flow according to their friends, and gravity, who yield to obstacles. Who seek
their final outlet without effort.
