Fadeout

The pleasures of plenty are easy to appreciate: the roast pork, the apple pie a-la-mode, the symphony blazing forte, the lambent flower beds of June, the autumn leaves at their peak. But now we are moving into the fadeout of the year. The trees have dropped their "Joseph's coat" to trample underfoot and now stand stark in early twilight.

To make it through the long lean times of the North Country unshattered, it is necessary to learn the pleasures of paucity. If not the symphony, the lone flute. If not the pie, the first sip of hot green tea. If not the moan, the sigh. The last leaf to fall is the most precious.

The slim beech lets go
every leaf but this one.
What gold is in it?

Perfect lack of storm

October has been so sweet. All that sun, all that glorious color. Everything has to come together just right to create such a season. Frost, but not too much, rain enough for healthy color, but not so much as to strip the trees. Snow and wind have to bide their time, too. A perfect lack of storm, one might say. You want to just walk along and kick the leaves a little, head full of nothing.

Such a contrast with the wider world—the bellicose campaign and the deep unease of financial freefall. But then fall has always been the season of cognitive dissonance. You want to revel in it, suck the last beauty from the season's marrow, but know in your own bones how soon the snow will fly. The geese fly, too. Time to bunker up and hunker down, time for the den and the long uneasy watch 'til spring. Snowbird time; get-out-of-Dodge time. Still, the leaves are lambent in the slant afternoon light. Give them their moment while it lasts.