When Autumn Comes Early

Another summer of drought, and autumn has come early, shuddering the blades of grass and rippling the water. Before August was old, I saw the changing keenness of the morning light and smelled the ripening of the air. Maples are already gilding, fire pits raked into life, and the drying corn waits in the country fields. It feels so soon.

The part of me that’s Earth wants to sink my toes into the grass and walk barefoot on the warm and desiccated soil. I think of wearing sweaters and boots, tramping through pumpkin patches, walking out to the lake to bid farewell to the birds. I want to soak the last of the golden sunshine through my skin and into my bones, hoarding against the day when the misty grey shutters of winter finally close and we’re alone with the North wind.

The signs of preparation are everywhere in my corner of the world: Cicadas emerging from the Earth to mate and fling their fragile wings against the sky in a dance of death, petunias and verbena drawing in their finery and saying “Enough” to the old year, and the sonorous songs of the toads growing softer as the chorus thins each night. The dogs chase small creatures beyond the wild borders of the yard, standing this land as our family’s own inviolable survival ground.

Bears eat, squirrels gather, and people clean. Worn couches, soiled rugs, mysterious damp and lumpy cartons, and rickety particle board bookshelves find themselves in a curbside line-up on garbage day. Yard sales abound, the hot dark recesses of attics are scraped by brooms, and writers shuffle the limitless scraps of paper on their desks trying to put them to rights.

Mostly, I prepare for the solitude, the long intermezzo of days spent within walls when the world is a scene beyond glass. It requires new music, a list of go-to movies, and stacks of books handpicked to be at their best in chilly window seats when the snow flies. Who can resist Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre or anything by Charles Dickens when the wind howls and the back steps are carpeted with ice?

And of course, the absolute stillness of snowfalls, the wild dancing of blizzards, and the lowering leaden skies were tailor made for writers to spin words up from their souls, out of their brains, and onto hard drives and notebook paper and sometimes napkins. So, while I’m cleaning and nesting, raking the lawn and putting the gardens to bed, ordering books on Amazon and putting cocoa and Bailey’s Irish Cream into the pantry – I’ll be waiting for the first hard frost of creation, the days and nights of snowbound imaginings.

What are your preparations when summer ends and autumn fires blaze up into the night? Make them gladly, whatever they are, storing up happiness and magic against the cold.