Autumn thoughts

I'm out walking in Temescal Valley this morning. It's cool and cloudy. It even sprinkled a little bit this morning. I was walking my friends' miniature dachshunds, when suddenly it hit me- a wave of nostalgia for the Midwest. I miss things like seeing deer, rabbits, squirrels, white squirrels, minks or weasels, beavers, groundhogs, moles and voles, turkeys, pheasants, and quail.  I miss seeing the flocks of geese and other waterfowl winding their way south, with the occasional honk heard high above the fields.  I miss the chainsaws buzzing as we gathered firewood for the wood burning stove.  I miss the giant, green "horse apples" from the Osage Orange trees thudding with a "thunk" as they fell to the soft, muddy ground.  I miss horses and small town parades.  I miss hearing the call of the owl or the bobwhite.  I miss the brilliant red cardinals and the brightly colored bluebirds or goldfinches. 

I miss seeing the seasons. I miss beautiful fall colors. I miss seeing the brilliant reds and oranges and yellows.  I miss long bike rides along the Mississippi River.  Fall makes me think of Pere Marquette park and its lodge with the human sized chess board. 

I miss my long bike rides through the still countryside on my brother's borrowed bike.  I miss my morning runs to Beaver Dam State Park.  I miss sitting in that wonderful old oak tree down in the woods, quietly listening to brown, crunchy leaves falling to the ground, watching for deer bounding along the trail below, and hearing squirrels barking at each other and jumping from branch to branch.  Do the flying squirrels even exist anymore?  Weren't the quail populations decimated?  Are there any more white squirrels?  And the great white stag is long dead.  Do foxes even exist there anymore? 

I feel the longing for connection to this fragile, dying world- a powerful longing which I always sensed in the cool, cloudy, brisk autumn days.  Like rare gems, it is the very finiteness of objects or even seasons which makes them so precious.  

Today, I miss picking apples in September when the days are still warm, but you can sense the brisk mornings are only days away, and the apple festival is too hot for the caramel drizzle over fresh cut apples from the orchard. Most of all, I miss the cool, autumn weather. I miss that sense of nostalgia, of closure, the sense of the ending of a season, the beginning of the dark time of winter. I know I'm supposed to be living in the moment and being at peace with where I am, and for the most part, I am. I do enjoy the cool winters here in Southern California.  I do enjoy the occasional rains here.

But I miss those heavy, massive thunderstorms, the deafening cracks of lightning, the heavy, rain-laden air you can feel and smell, and the sense of being safely snuggled inside when one of those major tornadic storms rolls through. 

I miss the simplicity of life in the Midwest, but I suppose that's just nostalgia speaking and not reality. I woke up today with that old sense of longing that wells up in my soul on a cloudy fall day.

I think more than anything, cool days in September always remind me of Dad. I remember his cheerful, morning greetings as we started each school day.  September reminds me of Dad commenting every year on KP Morton's tree: "Look! KP Morton's tree is turning red. It's always the first sign that autumn is on the way." 

I also know that if I went back home today, KP Morton's tree would not be turning red. It was cut down years ago. The top of the tree turned brilliant red against the courthouse dome as it towered above every other tree in town. It was the first to turn red every fall.  You could see the top of the tree from several miles outside of town.   For over 200 years, it was first to proclaim the changing of seasons, but then, as with all things in this finite realm, it became weak and diseased and was cut down.  So today, I find myself just longing for something that no longer exists.

Even in my earliest years, my formative years, back in Illinois, as a young child of less than five years old, I remember that sense of longing welling up in my soul every autumn. It was a sense of longing to know the creator of the beautiful world that I saw: as wheat fields turned golden, cool, crisp air with the pungent smell of decaying leaves filled my nostrils, and maple and sweet gum trees changed into brilliant robes of color.  Madeleine L'Engle in her amazing works on "Icons of the True" and her own aesthetic, that is, her own philosophy of art, once said that that longing we feel when we see a beautiful sunset or a wonderful painting is the same longing to know the creator. For me, that sense of longing is the proof that we have a soul, and that there is a creator. Now I know that that indeed is NOT proof. But for me, that is the longing for connection to the rest of the created world and its creator. When autumn comes with its transformative messages and its quiet whispers to "hush" and be still, I always feel a deeper connection to all of creation.  I feel quiet and still, but not lonely.  I feel connected.