My physical therapist recently asked the question as she was prodding and poking me this week, and it elicited an immediate positive reaction from the part of me that still works very well – my mouth. But it also put me in mind of another friend (a nursery owner) who can never wait to tell me how much she dislikes autumn. Though her posts on social media tell a very different story – as posts always do on social media – she sees autumn as cold, wet, dismal and dark.
I shared these thoughts with my tormentor, and surprisingly she felt instant kinship with my friend. And I say surprisingly, because I have always considered my friend’s views on autumn to be thoroughly heretical – and if I’m being perfectly honest, somewhat capricious.
The therapist confessed to her patient. She didn’t like the shrinking of days, she told me. The closing in of everything. The quiet finality of the season.
I lay there and thought about what I loved about autumn. For I do love it – spirit, mind and body. And I thought about it as I left the warmth of the office for an outside temperature that made me shiver; and I thought about it as my feet squelched through mud on the way to the car; and I thought about it as I drove home and recognized that the tulip poplars had divested themselves of three quarters of their leaves and that somehow it had become mid-October while I wasn’t watching.
My love for this season goes far beyond wafts of cinnamon and the draping of porches in what has become the tedious standardization of autumn. It is a recognition of the need for contraction and for rest. For my garden, for the creatures who inhabit it, and for myself.
When I am ready, it allows me the freedom to do without the inevitable undo of rampant growth. It is a true celebration and conclusion of all that has come before – the awakening of the earth and its long Dionysian revels. It is as necessary as the parent who picks up her toddler and puts it to bed long before the toddler thinks he is ready.
In the many years of my city and suburban life, I was a willing participant in Autumn™ — adding my straw bales and cornstalks to neighborhoods that would certainly never suffer the actual, messy creation of such things in back gardens during the rest of the year.
I was joined by many others, who today move with even greater alacrity from tawny bales to evergreen wreaths, until the lack of commercially viable holidays make the bleakness of winter inescapable, and the long stretch to spring a dreary countdown.
No doubt expensive pumpkins await trash collection on a suburban curb, signifying a profound disconnect to autumn. So much for the “harvest.”
The longer I live rurally, the less I feel any need for the manifestation of the consumer season. The true fall season is immersive, deeply meaningful, and a lot less expensive. And yet it still must be sought out. If I do not take time to appreciate autumn through morning walks, or snapping photos in the garden, or hunting mushrooms, I can easily be overwhelmed by all that must be done before that first frost, and how cold my hands are doing it.
Spring is not coy. It is an awakening. It is a joyful, positive, energizing season that transcends place and challenges the most melancholy to still find darkness. And as such, it is not the exclusive privilege of the country mouse who stares across greening fields with her morning coffee in hand.
Step out of your apartment on the twenty-third floor (please use the stairs), and you’ll feel life returning to the gray, deadened streets of a city. The temperature is warmer, the restaurants are setting up tables outdoors, the street trees are blooming, and everyone is being a hell of a lot nicer to one another.
All is potential. When I close my eyes and think back, I can remember the incredible feeling of exhilaration on the first fine day in March in the heart of whichever city I happened to be inhabiting at the time. The contrast was heartbreakingly joyful.
But that is spring.
Conversely, autumn is a period of contraction. It is a season that, at core, is taking away from us. If growth, vigor, life…energy must end, we want a damn good reason to be okay with it. Otherwise, in a heavily urbanized existence it is simply cruelty. Thus, #harvest signs where there is no harvest. The cinnamon oil assaulting the senses from grocery store to boutique shop. The tasteful and the tacky – all to provide some level of meaning as to why we’re being punished. Why we’re being put to bed.
The meaning and the joy are there without the superficialities of retail therapy, but I think finding them requires some measure of natural connection; and if you don’t live rurally, you must actively seek it out. It is present in the quiet corners of parks and river walks. It is present in moments spent tending balcony window boxes, and in those street trees, now throwing leaves on the cars parked below. It’s even present in the warming soups and stews we instinctively crave which connect us to a harvest we did not reap, but in which we may share.
Autumn is far more subtle in its joys than spring, and the worries of modern life can cunningly conceal those joys. It’s dark. I’m cold. There are wet, slimy, leaves everywhere, and I’ve got 6,459 tender plants to bring in. How much is heating oil this year?!? If we don’t look for a true connection to autumn, and thus recognize its worth, we face winter even earlier than we should.
Why must the season end? Why must there be autumn? Mother Nature has spoken. Time for bed everyone. We might as well enjoy the story. – MW
“Illicited”? You meant “elicited”? Auto-correct…isn’t! Grrrr!
I did ENdeed Sandy! 🙂 Thank you for the sharp eyes. We are always working without editors about two hours before deadline. Unfortunately I cannot attest to anything near an illicit response these days – v. boring. 🙂 – MW
Oh how beautifully this is written. Thank you Marianne
Thank you Jessica. Appreciated. – MW
I find this to be beautifully written because Marianne has such a clever way with words. However I don’t share the same sentiment about autumn. Autumn to me is an opportunity to look back over the season…that is my gardens and smile or grimace at the results of my labor. It is a time when I marvel at the success of some plants which I neglected and wonder why some disappoint. Autumn is a time when an almost clean slate ( if not a clean garden) presents itself to my hopeful self . I am looking forward to next year.
I actually share many of your thoughts Carol Ann. Fall is a terrific opportunity for reflection, and I often think that the spring garden begins in the autumn. – MW
We’ll written … and though it’s tucked in after “the quiet corners of parks and river walks,” there’s a lot to be said for the enjoyment of a “warming soup or hearty stew” we may not have known we’d been missing!
Where I live spring is windy and cool but in fairness the plants are lovely and you can almost smell hopefulness in the air. However, in autumn it’s quiet and everything is bathed in a golden glow. The hot, hot days are gone and we can go outside in the afternoon for a walk. I love autumn!
I live & garden in the Pacific North West & have a complete dread of winter, presaged by melancholy as soon as the weather turns to fall. Every year I have to remind myself in as many ways as I can that we will get through the cold, the dark, and the wet: that the seasons will turn again as they do. This column is a beautifully written reminder of just that – I’m saving it in my file marked “Hope in Deepest Winter”. Thanks for writing this, Marianne.
I understand that dread, having lived many years in the UK where one would leave for work in the dark and come home in the dark – even at 4pm. Hard to get your head round it, particularly if living in an urban environment. Trips to the country helped out a lot. Thanks for your lovely comment and kind words. – MW
Autumn is my favourite time of year. Everything is giving it’s all before it turns in for the year. In many ways the pace is slower too so even though there is lots to do if it doesn’t get done, oh well. Along with my plants I too need a rest. Thank heavens for Fall.
Left me rereading whole paragraphs to savor them.
Thank you for great writing.
not ready for bed just yet: flowers are blooming
and a green pepper intends to ripen
Thank you Diane – good to hear you still have fruit and flowers! – MW
Autumn has arrived, and it’s amazing that white pumpkin can be grown, thank you for sharing this.
Thanks for sharing !
Fall was my favorite time of year until fires ruined it – either prescribed burns, or wildfires. When the heat subsides, everything feels easier – exercise, gardening, work, doing errands, cooking, sleeping. And if we are blessed with autumn rains, the green begins immediately, providing rest for brown-wearied eyes.