We are at the beginning of autumn with the remnants of summer still lingering here and there.  The weather may change from year to year and our lives have different seasons, but the cycle of the year is steady.  We passed the equinox 10 days ago.  I remember when younger being fascinated that there were two days in the year when the whole world was the same with 12 hours light and 12 hours dark, the spring and autumn equinox.  I told a friend recently and she didn’t believe me.  Now our nights are longer than our days with the dark increasing by about 2 minutes each morning and evening until the solstice at the end of December when it starts to decrease again.  It is inexorable.  We build our lives around a pattern of uniformity and change.

Autumn is coming

The wind is on the go again, the breeze is on the blow.  It is shifting time, shifting smells, shifting seasons.  Autumn is coming.  It’s not hurrying, it’s making the most of the remnant sun, sneaking in on the back of summer.  How strange that the fullness of summer, the crops of fruit and grain and memories, should mature into roundness and ripeness, not at the height of summer but at its end, a prize given to another season, the taste of summer long after summer has gone. 

The leaves are lazily counting the days ‘til they fade and spin falling to the earth as the earth spins silently to face its back towards the sun.  There was so much preparation for this, so much greening and growing, so much opening and flourishing, so much light and hope and expectation and now it is falling away, fading with the leaves, closing and completing like the credits running over the last feet of film.

And did we do it?  Did we live the life we dreamt of last winter, did we surf the days and tie-dye the shorter nights into new creations, did we capture this year’s magic, the flavour and savour of it?  Did we mount the beast and run at the open door, arms wide, yelling for more?  Are we ready yet to finish with the froth and spin, and settle for the subtleties of greying days?

Could we capture the wind and send it back to harvest the unused days, or would they ferment and rot like over-ripe fruit?  There is no gainsaying it, the world has turned and we are sliding down the dark side grabbing blackberries and nuts to cheer our way.  I will find the new rhythms of conserving and warming and planning, I will welcome the energies of earth and grounding, but at the moment I can feel the loss and the turning as summer droops to fall.