Although I love fall with a passion most people reserve for a favorite sport, or for oceans and rivers, a love that breeds deep anticipation, savoring of each moment spent there, it is also a time of growing bittersweet melancholy.
It has to do with the end of the season, when the leaves, wet at last, release their grip and fill lawns, streets and gutters with their formerly glorious gold. It is fed by the necessary but unwelcome task of pulling the last plants, hangers- on of the summer gardens that filled our counters and refrigerators with bounty.
Now is the time that the bounty has been stored away for the winter months, and piles of firewood grow under carports and back porches.
Activities are getting started up again, now that it is cool enough to breathe and allergies have ebbed. Just as we get busier, days grow shorter, leaving us – me at least- wondering where the daylight went.
Perhaps it is an earmark of a great love, missing it so when it has gone, or is out of sight, even though you know it will return, that you will see it again. Yet there is always the cautionary voice in the back of one’s mind that says there are only so many winters, so many springs allotted to anyone. Saying take advantage of it while it is here.
That is the inspiration, then, to indulge in that great love, make time for it until it is gone, or it is time to go home and leave the ocean, or football season ends.
For me it is time to get my fill of country two tracks and fencerows full of blown over brambles and stray, dead tomato bushes. Time to walk in parks and down sidewalks around town, inhaling great lungs full of Oklahoma autumn.
But don’t be surprised if you catch me kicking through a pile of leaves while I’m at it.