September 2, 2005

• Somehow, it got to be September. The good thing about September is that summer’s relentless heat will soon be diminishing. September usually means the arrival of the first cool front of the fall season. The last time the mercury dropped below 70 was sometime near the end of May. That includes measuring at 5:00am.

  
  

  There was a kind old lady who lived in the same apartment complex as me, when I was in college. The first morning of cool weather would arrive, and she’d just stand out in the parking lot for hours, facing into the north breeze. Sometimes I’d go out there and stand with her. It seemed like she was literally absorbing the cool air. “Makes life worth living again,” she would say.

  
  

  Fall was always my favorite time of the year, even when I lived up north. My parents, on the other hand, were “summer people.” Or so it seemed. They were always chasing the sun, vacationing in– or moving to– warm climates. When I was 13, we moved to the south of Spain. “Seasons” were limited to looking at the snow line on the adjacent mountain range. When the snow would come down below 3000 feet, we knew it was “cold.”

  
  

  Fall in Denmark, for me, was always filled with expectation, with a promise of something ahead. I would walk through the woods near our house and wonder at golden leaves floating on still ponds, foggy mornings, and the amazing contrast of a bright red leaf against the darkness of a wet tree trunk. Fall, on some level, represented nature in the process of simplification– and the “promise” was, perhaps, the promise of rebirth and renewal, come spring.

  
  

  Fall was also about harvesting. Maybe the good feelings came to me because I sensed the “reciprocity” for hard work, coming back, in the form of the harvest. Fruit trees heavy with their crop, potatos to be dug up and laid in storage for winter, firewood to be covered, after drying through the summer, berries to be canned and frozen. Fall meant rewards for work, and preparation for the stillness of winter.

  
  

  Fall is approaching, in my life. Perhaps not so much in the chronological sense, as in the sense that I am coming to a point of “harvest,” a time where there will change and I will reap the rewards of many years of work. Seekers often set out on a “journey to themselves.” But at some point, the journey inwards is complete, and a new journey– this one outward, into new territory– begins. Some part of me knows that this new journey is at hand– the journey of the “harvest.”

  
  

  I wonder if we can tell something about who a person is, by knowing their favorite season. And if so, what does a “winter,” “spring,” “summer” and “fall” person look like? Which season best defines who YOU are, right now?

  
  

   

  • 8:33 pm
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