Walking Through Autumn 

Walking Through Autumn 

In my tiny part of the world, autumn has settled in.

On some days this autumn, like this one, walking outside feels like walking in summer. No jacket, no hat, the sun warm on my face. And if not for the strange slant of the sunlight, I could easily believe that it is still summer.

But a glance at the clock when darkness descends over my little town tells me the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting longer – and we’re headed inexorably into the howling winds and icy roads and snowy days of Winter.

The shorter days are a subtle reminder that the bitter, biting, and unrelenting winds of winter will soon whip the snow in whitescapes swirling and drifting down my lonely street and painting the world a wondrous white.

Soon, I’ll watch snowflakes flurry, meet in dizzy dances under the streetlamp, and wonder where summer… and autumn have gone.

In its own way, the beautiful and brilliant palette of autumn, the reds and yellows and shades of orange, mock my sadness dredged up from the reluctant realization that another summer has gone, another autumn has come, another year has gone. 

And winter is on its way.

Every year passes faster than the one before. The less time I have left the more quickly time passes. Weeks pass by like days… and months pass by like weeks. It’s part of growing old. If only we had known the true value of time when we were younger, we might not have wasted so much of it.

I am not sure why autumn has such a profound effect on me. It brings deep thoughts and uncertainties, and it makes me wonder.

Why is life not fair? Life is unquestionably not fair.  It seems to me that if life were fair, time would pass quickly when we are young, healthy, and have plenty of time left… and pass more slowly when we’re older and the sand in life’s hourglass swiftly running out.

As a child sitting in school, I remember looking at the classroom clock, its hands telling me there were ten minutes left in the school day. And those ten minutes seemed to take forever. Back then, a week in school seemed like a month. From Monday to Friday was a long road.

And I can remember that summer vacation from school, as welcome as it was, got to a point where it seemed to drag on and on. So much so that by the end of August, I was eager to go back to school. I loved my summer vacation but summer, way back then, seemed too long.

Funny… summer once lasted forever and now it seems like it was never here at all.

In autumn, sunlight has a strange slant to it. I look out the window at the shadows cast by the trees and they’re long and unusual – almost eerie. 

Something seems amiss with the world. But it’s exactly as it is supposed to be. But I have an uneasy feeling that accompanies the beauty of autumn, And I can’t quite figure out how to describe it. Maybe it’s the “not knowing”… not knowing what lies ahead. With the seasons and with my life as well.

No matter how well you plan for tomorrow, tomorrow has its own plans. Tomorrow’s plans shape yours. You can carefully plan for every eventuality and yet tomorrow can slap you down in a hurry – and hit you with something you never saw coming.

Autumn in all its splendor and beauty affects me in strange ways. Autumn is and has always been, a “thought-starter” for me. It brings on melancholy thoughts. But those thoughts can quickly turn whimsical on a solitary walk through the miracles of autumn. But the whimsy ebbs and flows with the melancholy.

Sometimes those wonderful, fanciful thoughts are weighed down by the years and memories and don’t get far off the ground.

I look past the shadows, into the sunshine and I see trees, dazzling and resplendent, painted by the invisible and ever-present hand of Nature, and each one of them is more beautiful than any painting I’ve ever seen. Yet, their beauty brings with it a sullen sadness, peaceful and deep, and I don’t know why. It’s a bizarre feeling because my mind can’t understand it. Yet it is also a welcome feeling because it has now become so familiar.

The colorful trees swaying in the lonely autumn wind, remind me that life is as fleeting as the seasons and as unpredictable and as changeable as the wind. Life is a mysterious brew of victories and losses, of sorrows and joys, of pleasure and pain, of tragedies and triumphs. And end the end, life is not fair.

Maybe it’s not supposed to be.

It’s an unseasonably warm autumn day – a day out of step with the season. It belongs more to June than to November. But days and seasons will be what they will be. We will all live exactly as long as we’re supposed to and not an hour… or a second longer.

The best we can hope for is to leave behind the love that we’ve shared.