Microseasons: Autumn

There is the micro season where it is still fall, as evidenced by the heaps of discolored leaves in street gutters. It can be warm and dry as a summer’s day and also invite flurries of snow that make us feel as though we’re in a sepia snow globe. It is very interesting to experience seasons in a place I once spent all my seasons but paid no attention to, left for eight formative years, and am now returning on my Mary Oliver/Clarissa Pinkola Estes tenure of my life to study the family of things in nature.

Years ago I posted on Instagram about deep autumn and find it interesting how different my experiences in a year round summerland like Long Beach differ so vastly to this bog that experiences everything and feels so deeply. How similarly I paradoxically feel about it, and yet, how complicated and unsimple it is to categorize winter and summer, bad and good, when there are beautiful and meaningful things everywhere, always, constantly. There’s also a sure and enduring ache that we carry with us throughout these days. They coexist.

I looked out my bathroom window, unencumbered by things such as curtains or blinds and was struck by the sudden realization that the wind had in fact blown so hard that it had taken the once vivacious leaves with it. Now all that remains are stark marshmallow sticks attached to a bulky trunk. This part used to scare me, because when I didn’t feel safe, my world didn’t feel safe either. Instead of barren trees, I saw lack of hope. The cold and stark shapes contrasted against the sky felt ominous. Now that I am safe, my world is safe too. The tree has lost her leaves and it means nothing at all. It means that this is good, it was meant to be this way. We walk through this time, too and see beautiful things still, and love it and love tomorrow too when perhaps we will (one day) see a green bud sing hope to spring. 

There is the frost on the grass in the mornings season. It is also the cicadas buzzing in the trees in the afternoons season, there is an overlap. You can still hear frogs and crickets through open bedroom windows at night. 

You can still hear the song of the black capped chickadees (a spring sound!) as well as the cawing of crows in the same day in this season. I am learning the sounds of the birds and trying to better understand what they're trying to say, that's an inner season I am experiencing personally. Caring about more than enjoying birdsong for my selfish delight, but trying harder to understand.

You’ll certainly hear geese overhead as they make their way south. Every single time I see or hear them, without fail, I think of Mary Oliver and one of my favorite poems.

So what is this all for, then? Hm. Look out into the dark night sky when it is cold, yes, but also clear and see the magic that is stars and know it’s just for you and hide it up like a treasure because you know that no photograph could ever truly do it justice anyway. You get to keep it and it only ever happened just for you anyway, a special gift from the universe and let that make you stay up late scrawling random yet poignant poetry about life and seasons and share it with some people you think might want to hear it. 

I'm doing as the natives do and living fully within each season here which changes almost daily. This is beyond human-made calendar seasons, these are love notes from the earth that act as messengers and guides, like a compass, letting us know where we are in the timeline of things.