Because beauty consists of its own passing just as we reach for it.
—Muriel Barbery
I stand still and listen to Sparkle and Stash hunting far out in fields whitened with fall’s first frost. The small hounds make a show of telling me bunnies have passed nearby, while I stand wishing the bunnies safely on their bunny way. Little do these dogs know how their simple pursuits fill me with joy and point me to what matters most.
When the world of humankind often feels like madness: wars, anger, greed, corruption, cruelty, and destruction, I, like many, turn to nature. Standing in the stillness of a clear autumn day, I find solace. I find my balance. Nature can be harsh, certainly, but there’s a beauty rhythm that makes sense.
Fall, twilight of the year, has arrived. I know I wouldn’t want to live in a place without the seasons: the silence of winter’s snow. Darkness enveloping. Quiet nights. Woodfires, books, baking bread, homemade soup. The soft thrill of spring. The smell of the forest. Birdsong, spring peepers, flowers, and the first new air. The languid days of summer. Bare feet on grass and veggies from the garden. And fall. Autumn harvests, trees in colored costumes, the smell of burning leaves. Fall has always touched my heart deeply. The French have a saying, reflets d’antan or “reflections of yesteryear” and perhaps fall asks us to reflect upon the year as it nears its end. As we mark the passage of time with tradition and ritual, we seek also to differentiate time past from time present and time yet to be, giving us a sense of control over what will always be uncontrollable, even unknowable. Perhaps the seasons mirror back to us the only true certainty: the paradox of change.
Many times this year the world felt foreign to this human. The divisiveness, the othering, and the wars, when it seems obvious we’re all one and connected: rocks, trees, animals, human animals. Unlimited information and misinformation bombard us, yet sometimes it’s more important to feel than to know. The artificial and nonsensical world of social media further fuels human rage. Social media may be essential to the young and nearly essential to everyone else—keeping up with far-off family in one fell Facebook post. I like to keep in touch with friends in other countries, yet find myself drawn into an artificial world that’s hard to understand.
How can one small square on Instagram within a rectangle of my phone compete with the picture that surrounds me now? I don’t want to become lost within those squares within the rectangle, head and neck perpetually bent, missing the sweep of autumn flowers or the pumpkin turning orange on the vine. Instagram as yet cannot offer the sun’s late-afternoon warmth on my face, the spacious stillness of a pure autumn day . . . or the scent of a rose. None of this can my iphone’s lens adequately capture, and as I stand, phone poised, ready to snap a photo, my heart speaks up and I realize, the dogs have it right. They’re back from their hunt. There’s Sparkle stretched out in a patch of sunlight—her white contrasting with the brown earth and grass. There’s Stash in style up on the bench. I put down the camera and stand and listen to the wind as it moves through dusty red dogwood eaves.
If I were told I had only one week left to live, I would not take for granted the fluttering of doves as they bathe in the birdbath, nor the harvest moon that rises orange over the mountains. I would marvel at the figs hanging ripe on the tree, the feel of grass beneath my bare feet and I wouldn’t worry about any little weeds. The ants marching in formation, the cricket’s autumn chorus, and the beetles scurrying by—all miraculous to behold. In the cornfields, tawny, dried stalks clack back and forth. And how magnificent, the butterscotch taste of a wild persimmon or a tart, fresh-picked apple? I would love the eerie glowing leaves against a gunmetal gray sky and let the scene speak to me of the pot of soup upon the stove, the warmth inside, an inward time.
So, I renounce the nonsensical world that resides on a tiny rectangular screen and look up in time to see a shower of golden walnut leaves dance wildly then fall to earth.
All at once, the little hounds leap up, following some silent signal that speaks to them alone. The evenings grow shorter and the light holds poignant clarity. The air is the crisp air of fall. Overhead, geese honk flying south. I wish them safely on their journey and wish for all mankind to love this imperfect world as much as I.
Sparkle hunts in the first frost in November.
Climate change makes it warm enough to swim in Noevmber.
My best teachers.