Stillness, Stars, and the Enduring Magic of Fall Colors

On rising

“But do I really have to fall first?” asked squirrel.

“Not at all,” fox laughed, “but falling gives you the choice.”

Mobile: A series of nine “The Classic” mobiles created for suites in the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education and Hotel, a mid-century modern hotel on campus built in 1956.

Thoughts while making

When I was seven, my bedroom window was large, and it squealed when you opened it.

It faced our front yard on Ironwood Road.  

I was often scared of burglars coming through that big window, but as a teen it provided an easy way out.

There were three Liquidambar trees in the yard. And every October, they would erupt.

Tall as our two-story house, they’d fire in furnace reds and stoplight yellows, smoked orange and autumn cherry.

I remember lying in bed, hoping to catch sight of the next leaf drifting down to the ground.

There’s a stillness that comes right before a leaf drops, isn’t there?

It’s as if time stands still.

A moment to honor the change.

I’d try to guess where that next leaf was going to come from. I was usually wrong.

As an adult, fall and its changing colors offer wise counsel.

Here we have these leaves – leaves that weren’t even there but seven months ago – gathering energy from a star 92 million miles away, delivering it to the branch and trunk beyond where it is used to convert water drawn up from roots deep sunk into soil and carbon dioxide sponged from the air into sugars and oxygen, feeding the plant, feeding the planet, nourishing you, giving to me.

And now, when the temperatures drop and the earth tips and tilts, and days shorten and dark thoughts converge – a time when it seems they are more needed than ever – they let go. They simply let go, one by one, releasing. Until there are no more. Until they are just a memory. And the tree stands bare, skeletal.

Sometimes – oftentimes – things are not what they appear, are they? Ancient cycles spinning in rhythms, asking us for trust, for patience, as wind blows through old bones; cycles of change as true as time, endlessly moving through me, moving within you.

What does fall evoke for you?