The Ghosts of Autumn

I blow through the season like the leader of a marching band: calling the pace, setting the mood. Some days I blast over the countryside, whipping the trees into a frenzied dance, bowling over anything that dares to stand in my way. I sneak chilly fingers through small cracks into the spaces where people seek shelter, causing them to draw their sweaters more tightly around them and build the first fires of the season. Other days I come playfully, a fresh breeze cooling the brows of adults busily raking into piles the leaves I blew down for them; tickling the cheeks of children playing in the piles, helping me to scatter the leaves once more. I tenderly fan wisps of hair around the faces of lovers walking hand in hand down a country road, then puff a wintry gust past them so they will huddle together, seeking warmth.

I pick up scents as I pass through and deposit them in unwary nostrils, opening up sudden vistas of memory, as if from nowhere. From the gardens I gather pumpkins ripening, apples past ripe; the dark, dank scent of exposed earth as vegetables are pulled from their home, transitioning, becoming the harvest. I pluck the slightly sour tang of autumn flowers, deep-colored blooms holding court now that the lush symphony of summer has died down. Swooping down around busy farmhouses, I carry away the smells of cooking as women preserve the bounty, capturing memories of freshness for the dark days ahead. Today I play around the woman walking with her dog. He runs ahead, leaving her to amble alone through the crisp fields. I will bring her the memory, the one that comes to her every fall, the one she can’t quite place. As I drift it past her face, a top note of berries and open fields with a base of mounded leaves and distant ocean, she inhales deeply and is taken back to that other time, shadowy around the edges like a dream.

She is young, so young - 17 years old and fresh, not yet shaped by the tempering effects of the years. She barges blithely ahead into most days, as if convinced that the world has been put here just for her. Yet there are times like today, wandering down a dusty lane between tangles of wild blackberries, when she feels small and a little bit lost. She stares out across the fields, taking in the mauves, rusts and ambers of a Northwest autumn, and wonders about her future. Where will she go? What will she do? Will she find happiness? Adventure? Love? A playful gust of wind softly whistles past her ear, teasing her to follow, and suddenly anything seems possible. She feels the life coursing through her vibrant young body and is filled with hope. Surely good things will come to her. She plucks some berries from the bush beside her and pops them into her mouth; surely her life will be as sweet as these. She eats her fill. The berries stain her hands.

Looking around with her clear eyes, she now sees the earth slowly falling into itself: leaves flying far from their branches, fallen berries rotting into the ground, dry cornstalks bending toward the soil, dying to be born again. For a blissful moment, she is immune to the cycle. She will continue on forever. Then a sharp breeze huffs past, tickling the hairs on her neck, probing beneath her jacket, causing her to shiver at the touch of its icy breath. With that touch comes the realization - the first time she feels it, deep in her belly - that she is part of the cycle; that she will die, many times, to be born again; that the dreams she dreams now may be only passing illusions, impossible to grab and hold for all time. She shivers again as the ghosts of autumn enter her, whispering down her spine to leave an indelible mark that will color her life. For the first time she straddles the teeter-totter between hope and hopelessness, light and dark, birth and death. She will spend the rest of her life striving to find her balance.

And every autumn, as she watches the falling of the year, I bring her back to this moment. Looking pensive, she stops to gaze around at the splendor of this, her favorite season, and wonders where this wisp of memory comes from. She captures no details, only a flood of misty feelings from deep within and long ago. Standing quietly for a moment she allows them to take her, then walks on, soaking up the beauty of the day through the light cloak of acceptance she now keeps wrapped around her against the autumn chill.

1997, Sebastopol, CA