Autumnal Musings

A few thoughts about my favourite season

Perhaps it is because I was born in the month of September that I egocentrically love both the month and the season that usually begins towards the end of it.

 

When I think of September, I think of long, warm, lazy days followed by crisp, cool nights with a hint of frost that starts the leaves of the deciduous trees changing.

 

September is the month of Indian summer, as we called it in my youth. The last vestiges of that hot and humid season, but without the extreme heat and humidity of summer.

 

Laying in the still-green grass, with the warm sun sensuously caressing you, yet a cool breeze tickling your face and whispering in your ear, hinting of the long, cold sleep to come. A feeling of delightful languor invades you and makes you wish that every day could be like this.  

 

Then as September ends and moves into October, the days become cool and the nights cold. The leaves turn colour, rustling in the breezes that soon gain momentum and blow them away.

 

Ah, but while they cling to the trees, the beauty that meets your eyes takes your breath away.

 

Walking, cycling, driving, it matters not. Just to reach the crest of a hill and gaze at the riot of brilliant colours brightened by the still warm sun brings such pleasure to the eye, instilled in the memory, never to be forgotten.

 

As October ends, the chill of November sets in. Wherever you walk, you hear the leaves still clinging to the trees protesting against the wind, swishing as they lose their grasp and skitter down the street and crunching dryly beneath your feet. Heaps of leaves raked by parents torn asunder by laughing and jumping children. The tang of decaying leaves and the occasional fire that consumes them hang in the cold air.  

 

November, dull and grey with shorter and shorter days waiting for the cathartic snows that sometimes don't arrive 'til December or January. The drab ending to the vivid season filled with the promise of rebirth.  

 

Right now, I live in a country where there is no autumn. When my month arrives, I find myself suffused with an expectant longing for these miraculous changes that never come. A slight tristesse comes over me as I think of the tree-covered hills, rolling seemingly endlessly towards the horizon, blazing in their autumnal garb as the sunlight illuminates their jewel-like colours, but I can see them only in my mind's eye.

Reviews

[kylie]

This captured Autumn perfectly (: great job. You are a wonderful writer!

[roarke]

RRK this is a great seasonal painting. Told so smoothly I could hear you speak the words. I think we can see change anywhere, any season, it just takes a different kind of sensing perspective. With this piece you enliven all your senses to capture what the season inspires in you and then you have given it to us. Now, where's my mittens......