Just before fall…

Autumn in the Midwest is magical. The air has a feel to it, a feel touched with delight at the beauty all around, a feel touched with sadness and a kind of longing. Often, the autumn comes quickly, the leaves falling around, the color of the air changing, also. In the Midwest, we know that these magical days will be quickly followed by cold, by wind off the Great Lakes, by gray skies that go on for a long distance – and for a long time.

Autumn here in the West does not hold the magic that autumn in the Midwest held for me. Still, I watch with interest as the squirrels, tails twitching, climb quickly on their short legs across the branches of trees, scavengers, making plans for the winter. The squirrel that lives in my tree moves with a kind of stealth, watching me – my outline in the window – body turned to the side to give a full on view of this stranger, a look filled with confusion, and fear. And then the squirrel runs away, out of sight, out of danger. I know we inhabit the same place on earth, but our lives are so very different: I watch the squirrel with interest; the squirrel watches me with fear.

We both know, though, that time is passing, that the light is changing, day by day, and that the days are shortening.

I miss the luxury of autumn in the Midwest, where the trees gladly hold their colorful branches into the sky. Even so, I see autumn here in the West, a long, slow autumn that begins with a subtle change in the greens of grass, the trees. Soon, the leaves on the birch tree I’ve watched so long outside my window – the birch tree that is part of me, part of this place – will begin to yellow. The leaves fall late from that tree; it holds on to the summer green longer than the trees around it.

We are waiting. The tree is waiting. I am waiting. We are waiting for just the right moment. Like my life, which has passed so quickly from the little girl who walked on the crunching leaves to school to this elder, looking at the leaves from her window – the tree will not let go ahead of its time. Nothing can force it. Nothing can make it lose its turn to softly let go.

And so, each day, I gaze carefully at my friend, my companion, that faithful tree. I gaze, I wait. The tree waits (I think). We are waiting for what only the passage of time will bring us.

See! The tree waits! – Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 9/2023