Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Changing Seasons

If there was no calendar to mark the days, I would have noticed sooner that fall was creeping in. A tinge of color appears sporadically in the trees, framing the face of summer with the reminder that this too shall pass. It reminds me of the way a smoker’s hair will turn yellow, or the way the ocean slowly pulls away to reveal its foundation. We can feel it in our bones, like the sap leaking out of the trees; a slow settling into the moment that must come, when the garden withers and dies.

For most of my life, summer was my favorite season. Until I moved away from Maine, I didn’t understand how anyone could favor another season above this one. That’s because I never had a hard time sleeping at night or needed to pay for air conditioning. It’s not that this summer has been awful, but there have been enough uncomfortable days to change my mind. Not to mention, I spent most of my time inside an office building with no windows, so the bitterness has turned sour, and the sour has solidified into surrender.

If summer is life in full bloom and autumn is dying, then what does that say about my changing preference? I love the continual warmth, the freckles, the lusciousness of summer, but I’m anxious for cool, crisp air to breathe, smelling of wood smoke, visiting the apple orchard, sleeping better at night. Fall reminds me of horseback riding when I was younger. Every Saturday my mom would drive me out to Gray where I would take lessons. It was our designated time and it was cherished like the last leaves clinging onto the trees. It reminds me of hiking and the cold feeling of labored breath sitting heavy in the lungs.

It is this time especially—the cusp of summer transitioning into autumn— that has my heart full and anxious. My calendar is busy with commitments, but all I want to do each weekend is run away to a cool, shorter day on a mountain path winding up between reds, oranges, and yellows. And I can’t believe myself—how I used to dread this change.

There was a time, too, when I was an idealist, always positive, always optimistic. This is when I loved summer best. Is there a direct correlation here? Who knows. But it’s been strange that the tide of my life, as it changes, my attitudes my idealism, cools. My heart is still alive and well, but it is seasoned a bit more, and so, perhaps, it longs for a season to correspond to the rich colors that are there now. Perhaps not so perfectly alive and well, a bit more weathered. We’re all dying and I guess that’s not such a bad thing.

Nature dies so easily it seems, just gradually letting go; cutting off one leaf, one branch at a time. The sap, the life energy that rose in the spring, gradually settles down the trunk and then into the ground, underground where the roots hang on tight through the winter. The garden yellows, wilts, dries out; it is picked clean or left to seed. I am having a harder time letting go of my ideals, but I am learning to let go the way the world does, because it doesn’t take the harsh winds and the frosts and the disappearing sun so personally.

We do this, tend to take life and its insults so personally. How can life be so hard, we ask. Why did this happen to me? Why must I suffer and die? I don’t know. But I’m learning that this truth can’t easily be brushed aside and covered up with a positive attitude and sunny outlook. But it’s not something to take too seriously or too personally either.

Though it symbolizes dying in many ways, autumn has its own merits, of course. It is part of the cycle and therefore part of the birthing process just as much as the letting go. In the words of my grandmother, “Life goes on”, and it’s true, no matter which season you prefer or detest, it changes again and again. Sometimes we take this change too lightly, but each stage is pregnant with symbolism and opportunity to embrace the cycle of life.

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