Falling Into the Past
“In autumn, the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer’s abundance decays. Faced with this inevitability, what does nature do in autumn? She scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring.”
Photo by Francesco Alberti on Unsplash
The weather on the west coast has been ideal this past week as summer slips into fall. But I now head out with a sweater tucked in my backpack, just in case the wind picks up, and in the evenings I anticipate that soon we will be lighting a fire. Earlier this week, I walked into the village, taking the back path through the park. Before I even saw them, I could hear squirrels rustling in the leaves; black squirrels digging and hoarding, preparing for cooler days. At the end of the park sits the residence where my mother lived for a year before her death. I knew that if she were still alive, today would be a day that she would want to walk into the village with me for a coffee. We would have headed to our favourite coffee shop to people-watch as we sipped a latte. After, we may have walked to the chocolate shop so she could buy something sweet to serve with afternoon tea. We would definitely have stopped at the grocery store to buy fresh flowers. I miss these impromptu walks, and the delight on my mother’s face.
I tried to identify the warmth I felt that morning as I reflected on this memory - contentment, happiness, mixed with a tinge of longing. The next morning on CBC, Julie Nesrallah spoke of the nostalgia associated with autumn. Yes, I thought, that is what I had been feeling.
It seems many of us recognize autumn as our favourite season, and the reason is partly attributed to nostalgia. Nostalgia is typically derived from positive past experiences, and at 64, I have a lifetime of memories - no wonder I feel nostalgic!
What nostalgic moments do you reminisce about in the fall? I remember the first days of school and holidays enjoyed after summer crowds had dissipated. I recall the return of meetings and new projects and, if I go even further back, homework assignments, the start of Brownies, and playing outside after school as the days slipped into darkness.
We moved when I was in grade two, and instead of walking to school with my friends, I remember waiting on the street corner for the bus, a street over from our house, along with children I barely knew. I don’t remember my mother waiting with me; I think she must have been home with my younger brothers. And then I made friends and waiting at the bus stop meant snowball fights, talking with my best friend, Laurie, and flirting with boys.
When our children were young, before they started school, we would take our holidays in September. One of my favourites was a week on Hornby Island with my parents. I remember my girls, ages two and three, enjoying a giggling fest when a pigeon randomly settled on my father’s head. I celebrated my birthday that week and the girls made a lop-sided carrot cake for me with their dad - one of my favourite cakes ever!
We reverted to summer holidays while the girls were school-aged. But when they were older, my husband and I returned to our annual fall vacations. We re-visited our favourite cabin by the ocean, Point No Point in Sooke, British Columbia. We vowed we would return to Newfoundland, a province that left us in awe of its beauty. And, we said we would one day fit Vietnam into our Seprtmber travel plans again, after having to cancel because of my mother's cancer diagnosis.
Clarissa Silva, a behavioural scientist, says fall is a magical time for many of us. “The fall is a season of change. Fall is a transitional season in which nature is getting itself ready to produce for the future. Silva continues, “our bodies start mimicking this same process, preparing for a new slate.
It wassychologist Dr. Danielle Forshee, LLC, who introduced me to the concept that nostalgia is typically derived from positive past experiences. In other words, your autumnal nostalgia probably stems from happy memories you’ve made in the fall season throughout your life, and those same memories are simply making you feel good and excited for what the future season holds before it’s even officially begun. So every fall, there is this reminder that as things decay, new life forms deep underground.
Parker J. Palmer shares that while autumn is a season of great beauty, it is also a season of decline. In autumn, the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer’s abundance decays. Faced with this inevitability, what does nature do in autumn? She scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring.
In 1995, Parker Palmer wrote a welcome for the Fetzer Institute’s new retreat centre, Seasons, which included his musings on all four seasons. In his reflections on autumn, he wrote that in the autumnal events of his own experience, he is easily fixated on surface appearances—on the decline of meaning, the decay of relationships, the death of work. Yet looking more deeply, he sees the myriad of possibilities being planted to bear fruit in some season yet to come.
“In retrospect, I can see in my own life what I could not see at the time—how the job I lost helped me find work I needed to do, how the “road closed” sign turned me toward terrain I needed to travel, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to discern meanings I needed to know. On the surface, it seemed that life was lessening, but silently and lavishly the seeds of new life were always being sown.”
I wanted to share Mary Oliver’s poem Song for Autumn with you. The poem reminds me that as much as autumn may feel like a time of decay, life continues.
Song for Autumn
In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
- Mary Oliver