Falling Into Fall

We’ve fallen into fall this week, with temperature lows around 40 and highs in the 50s, gray skies, no color, a mist and sometimes light rain, cold. The comforter has returned to the bed and the heavy terry robe has replaced the light cotton robe. The windows are closed and the fans turned off. Sweaters and jackets have been pulled from the closet. The leaves on trees are beginning to turn (though they may have been for days, or weeks, unnoticed). The garden is spent, save a few lingering peppers, waiting for the threat of a first frost to be picked. The grass has stopped growing, the corn is turning brown. There’s talk of a chance of snow at baseball games in the northern cities for the last two weeks of the season. We pack for a road trip next week out east and have to prepare for sun or rain, warm or cool, the long-range forecast uncertain. “I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tones mellower, its colors richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow. . . . It knows the limitations of life and is content” (Lin Yutang).

Fall Foliage On the Upper Mississippi

The fall foliage is about a week past peak color on the upper Mississippi, but the drive up state highway 35 from Prairie du Chien to LaCrosse on the Wisconsin side is still gorgeous. The sumac is a brilliant red, and there are still flashes of vivid yellow maples, particularly on the hills in the small towns. The oaks look to have just started to change, though perhaps only to a dull brown, so the bluffs are muted, etched occasionally by the vertical white lines of birch. A few yellow and orange and rust leaves cling to branches, though recent winds have stripped many trees bare to near-bare. But the expanse of river, framed by the bluffs, and covered by a bright blue autumn sky, with the occasional surprise of a lingering splash of color, makes us slow down and take our time. Is there anywhere we would rather be that would make us rush through here?

Autumn

Autumn is moving into Iowa. Though not officially here for another two weeks, the temperatures have reached down to the low 50s at night, the high 60s during the day, with a crisp sun. We close the windows at night. The quilt is back on the bed and pulled up around our shoulders. The corn is turning brown and the soy fields yellow and both will be harvested soon. Jeans replace shorts. Sound seems amplified in the thin air, light more intense.

Metaphorically, autumn usually represents the on come of loss and death, as Shelley puts it: “Thou dirge / Of the dying year.” No doubt because I’ve lived most of my life in education, autumn has for me represented rather rebirth, the promise of a new (school) year, a new beginning, tabula rasa: Thou paean / Of the coming year.

But this autumn is different. While I’ve just started teaching two new classes, they are online and only two and I’m now retired. I don’t have four or five classes. I don’t have to go up to campus five days a week. I don’t have to go to department meetings once a month. I don’t have to go to professional development days, five this semester. And I don’t look at the season in the same way. I’m not sure what to make of it: Thou ditty / Of whatever the season might bring.