Autumnal

It's the last day of summer, and tomorrow the days will be shorter than the nights. Ever the wheel turns, but also—ugh. I know that winter is coming because it comes every dang year, but every year I also harbour a secret wish that we somehow become the Golden Isles and the winters are mild (and we also get a Target). But alas, winter in southwestern Ontario is coming, and she is never pretty. 

My biggest struggle with this time of year, regardless of weather or the temperature, is when we start to lose the light. The days get shorter and shorter, plus the added insult of "gaining" an hour that really means that the sun is gone by 5 PM each day. The six weeks on each side of the solstices are the hardest for me, because they are just so dark. I am no sun worshiper, but I miss that stupid ball of radiation something fierce. I try to deploy as many wards against the night as I can muster—daily walks, exercise, eating well, sleeping (but not too much!), creative projects—but the reality is that I tend to white-knuckle my way from Christmas to Family Day, because it's dark and cold and I'm miserable. 

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Because, first: autumn! Or as I like to think of it, Bad Summer. Like winter, summer is a real razzle-dazzle season; they have literally no/all chill, and extremes in both directions of emotion and temperature and solar exposure. Fall is milder, more temperate. Wind and rain, but not the tornado-watch thunderheads that fill the sky in August. No snow yet, or a very light and exciting dusting that melts within the hour. The garden bounty is coming to fruition—and while this is another personal ugh, since this year's garden was a proper disaster (I abandoned the tomatoes, my landlord ran over the raspberry cane with the lawnmower, and rodents ate everything else)—many other more dedicated and diligent gardeners are enjoying their crops. We get to rotate our sweaters and puffy vests back in, and I have never met a puffy vest I didn't immediately try to wear 300 days a year. Fall is golden light, orange leaves, and blue skies. 

Fall is also the time I commit to new routines. Something about that back-to-school energy that makes me want to take on a new version of myself, so I try to get that good vitamin regimen off the ground, or I start a new hobby, or I sign up for a class. I spent 23 years in the school system, and to me, September represents possibilities in learning and identity work. I like the predictability of school days and weeks with weekends. This year, I want to dive deeper in my creative goals; producing new work for my writer's group, taking a more adventurous approach to knitting projects, and actually completing the various projects that are languishing at the 80% complete mark (like the zine I made that just needs a cover, or the cookbook with three typos, or the knitting pattern that needs to be formatted, or the pants that need a new waistband, or or or orrrrr.....)

Aesthetically speaking, fall is all electronica and house music; something about those cool beats just hits me where I live, and it's much easier to dance when I don't feel like a walking hot flash. It's big sweaters and blankets. It's period movies about murders, and high fantasy on TV. It's candles on the table on Friday nights. It's stew and bread, cloth napkins and red wine. It's a few friends around the table, laughing after two glasses of wine or a fat IPA, the kids somewhere else in the house. I don't go in for "spooky season," which has been on the rise in the last decade or so as a dark corollary to basic-bitch PSL vibes, but fall is also dry leaves skittering across the pavement, mist in the air at midnight, and branches knocking against the window. It's a hunker-down sensation, a time of active burrowing and preparing for the upcoming winter. 

I know the secret of life is that nothing lingers, and that is the gift and curse of life here on earth. Hard seasons pass and we're glad to see them go; easy ones pass too, despite how hard we try to grab hold of them.  Fall is a reminder, to me at least, to pay attention to the turning of the page, the dusk and the dawn: the moments between the show-stopper, the big events, that's all our life as well.

We're in the final play-days of the year. Cool nights and warm days, and that golden light, makes being outside feel bittersweet—we all know the end is coming, we can sense it, but it's a lovely way to pass the time all the same. I love fall, and her final bursts of colour, of leaves, of exuberance. 

What a spectacular way to lose the light. May we all go into the darkness with this much joy.