“The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit.”
—George Elliot
Plums and grapes and apples ripen in a world aglow. Mornings are golden with mists. The light is failing, and trees turn gorgeous colors—orange, gold, amber, red—warm hues merging with the smell of fire while nights come sooner and faster. I see hostas with brown scars of frost damage and corn stalks, dry and sterile, whitened with hoar-frost. Sunflowers that yesterday faced upward, thrusting at the sun, now bend toward the ground like old men with worn-out spines.

We feel the change, exhilarating and ominous. The loss of the warm easy—long days, shorts and sandals, swimming, midnight sunsets, warm nights. After long drought, torrents of rain whipped by rough wind, and when the clouds clear: blue mountains topped with white snow.

Summer dissipates like morning reverie the moment I get up from breakfast and turn to work, and back at school I wear long jeans and socks and shirts with buttons. Nights have become chilly. Young girls have sorted through their closets, coming out pretty in their woolen scarves, puffy vests, sweaters and boots. Everyone becomes prettier or more handsome—without sweat and bad hair, imperfect flesh enhanced with layered beauty, and the younger ones exuberant about something they can’t quite find.

Pumpkins continue getting heavier; hard green pears turn slightly gold, softening. The rules are shifting.

A feeling flits in and out of me, like bats through a cavern—a hollowing sense that it’s all slipping away. I remember when the world was darker and colder than this, the relentless winter, the simple knowledge that nature is deadly wild, always, even when it seems to let up in March and April. Now, again, gentle summer has gone. Fire becomes important—we remember a need for warmth and light. We plan an autumn bonfire, light the furnace.

And we enjoy the earthy joys—apples turning sweet and red, heavy clusters of elderberries and grapes just in time for neotropical birds, flitting and feeding, building energy to migrate away. Bears come down from the high country, a lumbering hunger drawn to the ripening fruit.