Autumn is a season of change. The leaves explode into coloration, then fall. The botanical world closes up like an umbrella as flowers fade and foliage disappears. It’s not possible to not really feel a way of sorrow because the vivid colours and exuberant progress of the summer time season involves an finish.
After I take into consideration the autumn in these phrases, I do really feel an acute sense of loss. However since I’ve spent so a few years of my life at school, or with a toddler at school, in my thoughts the season stays the time of beginnings.
Childhood Summers
Who doesn’t keep in mind the lengthy, superb days of childhood summers? After I was a child, summer time appears to stretch eternally, that superb break from schoolwork and winter.
In fact, I used to be a toddler in central Alaska, the place summer time days did final for much longer than they need to. Within the “Land of the Midnight Solar,” we loved 24 hours of sunshine, day after day, by way of the summer time. However summer time was quick –- solely July and a part of August might depend as summer time — with a moist spring and a cool autumn elbowing in for room on both facet. Autumn was adopted by a plunge into an ice-cold, eight-month winter of darkness.
Time of Beginnings
However we didn’t thoughts summer time ending since we have been caught up within the preparations for the beginning of the college 12 months. New garments, new notebooks and pencils and pens, new winter coats and snow boots.
Autumn to me then was a time of beginnings. And this has remained the case, though I left Alaska and its faculties many years in the past. Since I continued attending college of 1 form or one other for many of my life, there was all the time that sense of renewed exercise.
The provides have been totally different once I went to school, legislation college and graduate college, once I attended the docent program on the San Francisco Botanical Backyard. However all started within the fall, and I got here to affiliate this time of 12 months with new vitality and recent begins.
Season of Change
And so I depend on autumn to restart my tasks yearly, overview and renew my goals, determine the place I’m and the place I wish to go. Because the stress-free days of summer time come to an finish, the true work begins once more. What is going to I study this 12 months? What is going to I write? What modifications will I make in my life?
These questions all the time come up within the fall, because the cool winds freshen my spirits and put together me to maneuver ahead with hope. And that’s what autumn means to me: the ahead motion, the brand new challenges, and, most of all, the hope.
