An autumnal truce

Here we are folks. After the summer that wasn’t, September slipped into our lives like a weekend guest who seemingly arrives early and plans to stay late. I must have missed June melding into July, let alone when August showed up. You can’t blame me; she was almost unrecognizable - what without her pool parties and county fairs.

That’s okay, I tell myself. Leave the illusory summer behind. Go ahead, lean into autumn, awaken my inner gyroscope of senses as I spy the moon that hovers low in the early morning sky and feel the chill in the air that mere weeks ago came from an appliance.

Truth is, I used to be mad at fall. Not an easy thing to do. Just try hating a season that wears its colors with such pride. Pre-pandemic, I believed autumn’s only job was to end summer and forewarn winter. As a born and bred Vermonter, let me tell you, Mister, foliage is a strident alarm in TSA warning colors to get the wood in, stock the pantry, and buy snow tires. Phew! Who has time to frolic in the leaves and sip apple cider?

Turns out whether you’re paying attention or not, fall still puts on a show. Year after year. Enough so that even driving to work turns a jaded New Englander into a leaf peeper. Some vistas are too impossible to ignore. The Worcester Range was always one of my favorites.

After the hazy days of summer, it’s as if autumn figured out how to use those photo filters on my iPhone! Fall makes every view more vivid. That usually nondescript bank of trees? Each branch is now astoundingly brilliant. That burgeoning field of goldenrod? It now appears ablaze. And Mount Mansfield? I don’t know how autumn pulled it off, but somehow that iconic face seems closer. And it’s framed by a blue so crystal it looks like one could swim in it.

This is the year I call a truce with fall. I need some peace in this world where fear-mongering has taken the place of leadership and a virus has infected all aspects of life on this planet. I now understand that hating fall because it portends winter is the most wasteful way to be. How can I afford to squander the beauty of today because of the fear of what’s ahead?

This is not something I take lightly. I ask it of myself every day. It is okay to collect the good while knowing hardship and worse, injustice, exists right around the corner? I certainly do not know the “correct” answer to this question and suspect it would change according to the day, the news, and the fear. Nonetheless, I’m reminded that, whenever possible, love beats fear. Yes, my new friend, autumn, that goes for you too.

Today, I’m feeling rather tender towards fall as September slips through my fingers towards October and onto the dawning darkness of November. It’s an expansion of thought that makes me want to say to autumn, “I’m glad you made it! Many things have been lost in these months of coronavirus, and yet here you are in all your glory.” And all I had to do was look.

Especially now, because of this pandemic, I’ll intently behold this season of transition, honoring its presence and passage, and deliberately choose to focus less on fear of what’s ahead. Instead, I’ll pause, drink in this time of harvest, endings, and beginnings only to remind myself that one season indeed follows another and that this, and all things, shall pass.

Carole Vasta Folley is a Vermont award winning playwright and columnist. Contact her at carolevf.com.