I see so many people at our lake this time of the year,
taking that last sentimental and somewhat traditional ride around the pond,
before they put the pontoon or boat away for the winter. Summer up here is such
a delightful season and it seems to quite magically strip off a few years from
all of us, if only in perception and if only for a few short months. Friends,
relatives and neighbors reconnect and gather to eat and drink and just enjoy
the ambience with you, on the heels of the summer wind. But all to soon the
nights grow long and colder and old Mother Nature starts to slowly button up this
little corner of the world we live in. “Turn down the lights,” she’s saying to
us, the party’s over. With the diminishing of the suns heat in the high
afternoon and the subsequent shorter days, she does just that. So now we wait
for our turn again, while the other half of the world gets their turn at
summer. We expect to be a little sad in fall but were not without hope of the
coming spring.
It starts innocently enough. Here and there a tawny yellow
leaf floats lazily to earth. It may be subtle at first and go unnoticed but
before long it will become a crescendo of leaves, striped away by autumn
breezes, leaving the trees standing naked, while offering us glimpses into the
deep woods we haven’t seen for a while. It seems we love our trees until the
leaves fall and then we whisper silently to them; “please come back to us and
try again.” I believe that every writer worth his or her salt has been inspired
and tried at one time or another to do justice, composing some kind of a
written description of fall but sadly most of us fall short of accomplishing it
as the sights and feelings often defy description. The animals of the forests
are sporting new and thicker coats now as they scurry about filling their
larders and finding new shelters. Overhead the birds who once soared on the
summer winds are making their plans to fly the coop on the remnants of it as
they point their heads toward the setting sun. Before long we too will retreat
to our shelters, warm and safe from winters icy blasts.
For me and for many of us older people, we now realize more
fully that our future is measured in years and not decades, as the reality of
what is happening in our lives bites just a little bit harder in fall. The days
of “there are lots more where that came from,” now seen more like a fervent
hope and are not anchored in any kind of certainty. We have for some time seen
and felt so many subtle bodily hints like aching joints, dimming vision and
foggy memories and the not so subtle ones too; like the laying to rest of
friends and family who have fallen before us. People that we took for granted
for far to long that became second nature to us over the years. We sometimes
used to wonder how we could ever live without them and now like it or not, were
getting the chance to find out. Life does go on though and in the words of the
song maker. “When the autumn weather
turns the leaves to flame, we don’t have time for the waiting game.”
Maybe old blue eyes said it best it best when he sang. “So the summer winds have come and gone.
And guess who sighs his lullabies through nights that never end. My fickle
friend. The summer wind.”
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