And so it begins. The imperceptible turning of the season from summer to fall has become much more evident to me this week.
Can you feel it?
The tree in our front yard has begun to undress for fall. Leaves are scattered underneath her canopy. Though the tree still looks full and green, day by day she’s getting ready to disrobe and stand naked in the wind.
And sunset is now happening almost an hour earlier than it was during the longest days of the year. Depending upon your point of view the shortening days can be seen as a boon or a bane. As a photographer who enjoys the soft ethereal light of sunrises and sunsets I find it easier to motivate myself to go out for sunrise and sunset when it’s not quite so early for sunrise or so late for sunset.
But I also miss the long hours of daylight and the simple joy of wandering in the twilight late in the evening.
Going into the gaps
Seeing all the signs of fall makes me more determined to soak in each minute in the sun that I can. And to gaze with eyes of wonder at all of the beauty that surrounds me every day. I shall spend my days, minutes, afternoons, being present to the joy and sorrow of each moment.
Another year has twined away, unrolled and dropped across nowhere like a flung banner painted in gibberish. “The last act is bloody,” said Pascal, “however brave be all the rest of the play; at the end they throw a little earth upon your head, and it’s all over forever.” Somewhere, everywhere, there is a gap…
[…]
The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps … are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fjords splitting the cliffs of mystery.
Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the solid, turn, and unlock — more than a maple — a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
— Annie Dillard, The Abundance
I make a promise to myself that I will spend time on the deck swing every day that weather permits simply noticing and soaking in the beauty all around. Swinging on the deck swing today, I am still surrounded by green leaves on two sides. The breeze touches my skin gently and the string of remaining summer days call out to me to be present and aware.
Gratitude is the song I sing even as sorrow for the swift change of seasons lurks in the background of my mind.
How about you? Can you feel it? The turning of the season?
May you walk in beauty.
A hornet’s nest in a crab apple tree at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum
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