The Edge of Darkness

Last weekend, I spent a few days in my grandmother’s garden. I peeled the bark off of the birch trees and I had to wear a jacket because autumn came quickly up north. The cool breeze infiltrated my damn-yankee blood. I wasn’t used to such crispness.

Now, it is morning in Virginia and I see a fortress of poplar trees, still green. Just a few leaves have begun to turn to yellow. The cicadas sing one last symphony, for they know that their days are numbered.

In just a few weeks, at the beginning of October, the breeze will bring more than a 70 degree wind. It will be cold enough to wear a cardigan most days and you might even want to place an extra blanket on your bed at night.

There’s something magical about waiting for autumn to come.

I think that we so often neglect to see our attachment to the natural world. The seasons reflect our stages of life. We need winter to hibernate a bit, to embrace death for a while, to remember mortality. Spring comes and we stand on the edge of lightness, we know that there is hope and winter does not last forever. Summer comes and we are alive again, we feel in touch with our youth. But then once again, we greet autumn. We stand on the edge of darkness, remembering the innocence of our summer, while preparing ourselves for the mortality that we will soon face. I get excited about autumn the way that most people feel when they are falling in love.

The garden on the other side of the house that once produced crops and abundant summer meals with butternut squash, corn, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, beans, and zinnias, is also preparing for its last harvest. Instead of rows of vegetables, we find lima beans and the beginnings of gourds. This morning, two peppers hung on the vine that once produced twenty.

The thing about autumn, or falling in love, is that it’s really inconvenient. You no longer can be selfish like you were in the summer, taking the vegetables for granted. You have to prepare for a winter, you have to save up and can some of your harvest, place the bulbous red tomatoes inside of a clear mason jar. Instead of a ripe bounty, you see a row of silver lids in your pantry. Just like when you really begin to care for another person, you have to lay the foundation for a solid relationship. You have to think about the future.

When you are standing on the edge of darkness, waiting for the leaves to change, looking at the last bits of life around you, you are vulnerable, just like the earth. The grass dies off a bit, to make way for the snow, just like we have to let our egos die off a bit before we can let someone else in.

The art of falling in love is a difficult one to master. It takes letting down your walls, giving your vulnerabilities to someone else, and being willing to accept even their ugliest parts.

I wonder what the trees think just before they have to shed their leaves. Standing confident with their lush greenery, they must be afraid of what’s going to happen next. As the chlorophyll depletes in their cell walls, they expose themselves fully. They let their guards down. As their leaves turn from green to red, gold, and orange, it’s like nature allows us to fall deeply in love with it, once again.

Tomorrow is the autumnal equinox. In Pennsylvania it feels like autumn has already started, but it the south, the love affair will soon begin.