Autumn

There is a definite change in the air when I lace up my running shoes, put my earbuds in, and head out the door for my morning run. Whether from the colder temperature or listening to the Top 40 hits, I run fast picking up my knees, even climbing a few hills as if I was thirty, okay forty. There is light frost on my neighbor’s roof.

I’m a four-season gal. I try not to pick favorites but fall, or autumn as they call it in Australia and Canada, has a special place in my heart, especially this year. Gone are the tourist crowds and the smoky, sultry days of summer. The air quality is excellent. Forecast is for rain all weekend. Yes! Never thought I’d say that living in the Pacific Northwest but here I am cheering on gray, gloomy days.

The cedar trees around my house have red-brown tinges on their leaves. I think they might’ve given up trying to grow and have succumbed to letting go of anything they might not need. I imagine them saying “Enough already, bring on winter”. We planted two maple trees and although we watered them all summer, they too have begun to shed, a beautiful carpet of rosy reds on the forest floor. Four tiny aspen, fenced in to protect from the grazing white-tail deer that roam through our property, now stand barren waiting until the spring to blossom again.

When I empty a large planter that sat on my front porch all summer, I hear the distinct honking of a flock of Canadian geese on their migratory route and breath in a lungful of refreshing air, grateful to live in a four-season land where I embrace and find comfort in change.

I woke, early

on an autumn morning

a slight shift of color

deep greens fading

faint tinges of red amid the wild rose

and yellow amongst the lowest leaves of the alder

the lost cries of the geese overhead

miles away from the lake

beginning their way

to warmth

away from cold

away from me.

How did you find solace this week?

Sharon

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