Yesterday {Sept.22nd} was the equinox—you know, that day of
the year when night and day share the same amount of time. Today is almost a
carbon copy of yesterday. However, now there is a difference. They’re not equal
anymore. One is longer than the other and it’s not the good one this time. I
spent some time on the porch swing today, looking out over the lake. The trees
on the shoreline across are changing into their colors of autumn. There is a south breeze creating little
ripples on the lake, and pushing already-fallen leaves across the surface, like
tiny sampans in the orient. If you sniff the air, there is a musty smell from
the woods, reminiscent of dying vegetation and moldy logs. The dock is out of
the water, the boat and the outdoor furniture put away, and now we wait.
It doesn’t seem to have been that long ago when we enjoyed
the spring equinox—and we waited for flowers to bloom and grass and leaves to
put some color into our gray and white world. Back then, the increasingly
longer day, was the good one. Springtime was like showing a film of fall
backwards, as the dock and the boat were going into the lake, instead of out.
The plants were budding instead of shedding, the flowers were blooming instead
of wilting, and my whole attitude was so different because I was excited,
instead of subdued. But now its fall and the leaves have become my
proxy-colored flowers. Today, I feel like a little kid who’s just been told to
go to bed because playtime is over, and all of my friends have gone home.
In the Pacific Ocean, west of Ecuador, lie the Galapagos
Islands. One thing that is unique about them is they virtually straddle the
equator. They have no change in the hours of daylight—spring or fall; the sun
just shines from a different direction. I have often wondered what it would be
like to live like that. I guess in the winter I would think it was pretty good,
but in the summer, not so much. Because summer here—well, it doesn’t get much
better than it is. Summer, as we know it traditionally at the lake, lives
between two bookends, as it arrives on Memorial Day, and thumbs its nose at us
on Labor Day. Fall, however, is so fickle, so open-ended, never announcing when
it’s coming or going. It’s like welcome company that arrives unannounced—leaving
us guessing how long it’s going to be around and dreading the ending we know is
coming.
So we take the fall days as they come, wishing for more, but
knowing each day is one more day that it’s not winter yet. No one seems to
understand what makes a summer rain so refreshing, but in fall—well, it’s just
unnecessary and sad. Then, one day we wake up and look out the back door and
there it is. As soft as a mother’s whisper, it came while we slept, blanketing
the earth once more; and now fall has left us just like that. No Labor Day
weekend, no ‘cheerio’ or even a goodbye. The gray and white winter world is
back and oh, it’s so deathly dark, cold and quiet. Maybe its Mother Nature’s
way of telling us, “I’m sorry I had to put the earth to sleep for a while, so
why don’t you just take it easy for a time, too.”
For a writer, autumn seems to defy ordinary description,
with its tawny grass and shriveled leaves, and all its death and dying. It’s
not so much a season, but a transition, that lets us down easy as we slide into
winter. No pun intended.
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