Season of preparation

Three images from a walk along the Eramosa River this evening


Even though autumn brings some of my favourite weather, I used to resent it as a harbinger of winter. Gardens fade, songbirds flee, and the fingers of frost slowly close their fist.

Elizabeth Murray's book Cultivating Sacred Space first enlightened me that winter is a time of transformation. Ideas gestate. Nesting indoors, one has time for baking, preserving, drawing and nurturing the self.

I had to accept winter that way in order to enjoy autumn. Fall is the season of preparation, letting go of summer's abundance and sowing the seeds of next year's projects. September has become my New Year.

Yesterday I came across an entry in Wikipedia about existential therapy. I recognized it as the underlying premise of my favourite self-therapy book, Intimacy and Solitude, by Stephanie Dowrick. Existential therapy emphasizes embracing the "human condition of aloneness," facing anxieties, taking responsibility and exercising freedom of choice. In particular, to lead a healthy, meaningful life, one must overcome the fear of death.

Winter is the little death that comes every year. In autumn we get ready to meet it gracefully. Each day is a gift, each moment an opportunity to experience fascination. It's practice for the greater seasons of life.


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But if I'd ever leave you,
It couldn't be in autumn.
How I'd leave in autumn I never will know.
I've seen how you sparkle
When fall nips the air.
I know you in autumn
And I must be there.

~Allan Jay Lerner

One more image is posted in iamthelorax