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| Albert Bierstadt - "Indian Summer on the Hudson River" |
Leaning to Amber
By Judith Cullen
© 2014
It started two nights ago. The vibrant, pulsing world of
summer is beginning to tilt slightly.
Its dominant hue is shifting from bright green of the triumphal sun
shining through the leaves that spring worked so diligently to bring to life.
Now, everything is beginning to take a slight amber tinge, and in about four to
six weeks the world will be glowing in the bronzes and coppers of autumn.
The first signs come with the sunset. After celebrant weeks
of being so pleased with itself in high summer that it joyously cannot help but
heat the night as well as the day, the sun decides to finally give it a rest.
The waning light brings breezes and cool air. I change my cotton blanket for my
favorite fleece again. Daytime
temperatures will still be climbing to sweat-worthy highs, but the nights sink into
the 50s and, for many, sleep deepens with the promise of satisfying
hibernations to come. Soon enough, it
will be outright cold all the time.
It’s never long, this respite - the sigh between seasons. In
other parts of the continent the seasons shift with far more efficiency and
clarity. I remember living in Indiana
and being shocked at how fast the seasons changed. There was little warning:
one day it was humid and 85 degrees, 48 hours later there were yellow leaves on
the sidewalk; one day there was thirty inches of ice on my front porch, two
days later every last bit of it was gone entirely. It was like someone brought
a crew in one night and et voila! - new season! The crew goes off for beers
with the satisfaction of another scenic change-over accomplished. In three
months they’ll do it all over again. Drink up while you can, lads and lasses!
Here in the Pacific Northwest ,
home of my childhood, seasons do not change in this dramatic fashion: they segue. One season leans into the next. It makes one yearly cycle seem more like
eight phases which tilt one into the other, much as the planet tilts on its
axis to bring them about. This particular
transition, between summer and autumn, is my favorite. While it is the
beginning of the decay of the year, somehow it also is subtly woven with signs
of beginning.
In addition to the amber tinted air, you can smell the new
clothes and fresh school supplies. I
know that kids today kit themselves out much differently than they did in my
day, but this time of year the air still smells of leather shoe polish, new
pencils, and fresh crayons waiting impatiently to be initiated to the wonders
of a virginally clean sheet of paper. Apples! In my mind I sniff the cider,
sweet rolls, and other foods with liberal lacings of cinnamon and judicious
pinches of clove. They don’t really have
to be present, because their essence is a part of me, called up from the dark
recesses of a half-century of accumulated sensory joys.
There’s more: football games, marching band, the excitement
of the first day, the annual barn dance, and foods eaten out of greasy paper
wrappers while sitting on impossibly hard bleachers. The archives also yield up the opening nights
of theater seasons, experiments in canning and liqueur making, baking bread for
the very first time, and huge pots of hearty homemade soups. I’ll wear a jacket
in the morning and lose it by 10 am, only to reach for it just before sunset.
The natural world is preparing for another well-deserved nap,
storing up energy to burst forth again in six months. We are about to celebrate the coming of that
rest. We begin the rich ritual of autumn
and winter saying, “Don’t mind us! We’ll keep ourselves busy. You rest and we’ll see you when the crocuses
break through to shatter the crust of your cold sleep.” That’s where we are
going, and the cooler nights are just the beginning.
Someone recently asked me, “How come everything can’t stay
the same?” and I remember thinking that very same thing as a child when summer began its
waning and the reality of abandoning days of freedom in the sun reared up like
a frowning menace. But that’s not how the universe works. Look around you and see nature in constant
flux, always a little different, dynamic not static. That is the joy and the
great message of creation to our little, rigid, linear minds – nothing stays
the same, everything is part of a continual circle of reinvention. As summer begins to lean into autumn, it’s
time to celebrate: soon we will be blessed to begin all over again.
Take time to savor every step of this rich journey, and
don’t forget your party hat.
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