Autumn Walk

Here I am. Walking slowly along the river path. Too slow, too languid to run or rush today. Bobble hat atop my head, gloveless hands buried deep in my pockets, brown leaves lie thick and crispy beneath my feet.

I woke early this morning and headed straight out before coffee as if in fear I would waste this precious autumnal sunshine.

Morning mist creeps over the fields. The almost full but waning moon still hangs conspiratorially over the Surrey hills.

Autumn has long been branded the season of death and decay. Autumn is endings. Nature’s finale.

“You expect to be sad in the Fall,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in ‘A Moveable Feast’, “Because part of you died each year.”

There is a melancholy to autumn, unlike the resolve of winter, anticipatory spring, or the festival of summer.

There is something about this season above all others that catches the essence of time and its passing.

I feel a sense of transition and a reminder of the value of change.

“Nothing gold will stay,” wrote the poet Robert Frost.

Autumn for me has always been a journey inward. Autumn triggers memories of the past. It reminds us of the simultaneity of death and life, in all its circuitry. A gentle reference to our impermanence.

But autumn is also full of beginnings.

Today was the first frost. Today the trees are at the height of their seasonal splendour.

Green has surrendered to gold, russets, and reds. A technicolour of deciduous maples, oaks and elms all hugging the swollen riverbank. A veritable smorgasbord of colour and change.

I blink in the dazzling sunlight, beneath a cloudless sky. What is it about the light on these bright crisp autumn mornings? The magical, dazzling glint of sunshine between fading, twisted trees before it gives way to mid-afternoon browns and beiges and 4pm darkness.

Endings aside this is the season for all the senses.

The smell of woodsmoke. The taste of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. The sounds of the swirling swollen rivers and streams now set to nurture and replenish the land until summer’s glow. The sight and feeling of joy I get from our two-year-old little boy who throws piles of autumn leaves over his head; over and over he roars in delight.

The woosh of wind in bare trees. The tingling feeling of icy cold wind on warm cheeks. This, the symphony of Autumn.

“The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”, wrote Keats.

After all it is autumn that gives us the Harvest moon, fearless squirrels with their twitchy tails on their quest to bury their requisite winter nut stash. Cashmere jumpers and red wine in front of an open fire. Hearty casseroles and mornings like these which take your breath away.

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is in flower”, wrote Albert Camus.

I sit down beside the weir running off the River Wey and stare up at the treetops from where I hear the ‘tap tap tap’ of our resident lesser spotted woodpecker.

Tree hugging and forest bathing has now been recognised as so beneficial to our mind and body that the Woodland Trust has argued it should be prescribed on the NHS.

“I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of the season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep,” wrote May Sarton in ‘Journal of a Solitude’.

“Imitate the trees,” she wrote.

“Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let is pass. Let it go.”

Yes, it’s true the twice daily honk of Summer geese over rooftops has long gone. So too the swifts and starlings. But I keep my eyes peeled for our winter guests - the redwing, waxwing, and whopper swans.

I surrender to feeling slower and to stealing myself for early morning walks in the wood along the riverbank in sun, rain, and snow.

I turn for home, coffee, and toast with melted butter. Grateful for the reminder that everything is passing, precious.

I bow to the seasons.

I will surrender to the passing of time.

And I tell myself that autumn is not the beginning of the end but the beginning because it’s now that the leaves bud on the trees.

As Scott Fitzgerald said, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

It is from here that new life will begin. The prelude for the bounty and of Spring.

ENDS