Autumn musings

I have never understood autumn.

Oh, I have meditated in the woods for hours, framed with the dull dust and greybrown underbrush while my mind soars the white sky with coaly black birds; I have felt myself in the clash of fire on dark wood as the New England forest burns around me; I have perceived the scent of syruped honeysuckle and August-baked fields and felt the bitter hand of autumn as she peers around the coattails of summer. But I have never understood it.

I, always fonder of the colder colors on the spectrum, find no particular joy in the heat of the season’s wardrobe. It burns hot against the decreasing temperature of the air, until finally the cold quenches the flames and leaves the landscape dull and monotone and surrendered. The dying yellows of the late season-- yellow-green, yellow-orange, yellow-brown, yellow-grey-- find harmony with the stoic blacks fading to husky charcoals, until finally even that fades, and the whole world is the same brown grey, ready to die but not quite dead.

I don’t know why I have such a problem with autumn. We have known each other long enough. I argue yet more with her sister springtime; I suppose it is just a matter of my own love for stability that throws for me these two seasons of change. Much fonder am I even of winter, when the air is as sharp as polished iron and the cold becomes alive, than I am of the cardinal seasons when it is much milder.

I have never understood autumn.

Perhaps, soon, I shall.