This is about the beauty of fall (autumn).
As I write this mini essay, North America and Europe is slowly reaching the end of the road for autumn (fall). Very soon, it will be winter.
Right now, the landscape looks dull – the deciduous trees have lost their leaves and look grey, as if they have lost their vitality. We have had the first bout of snow followed by rigid temperatures so the ground is frozen. Some days the sun shines brightly but on other days it is overcast. All in all, it looks dull and lugubrious.
But the early to mid autumn wasn’t like this. It was vibrant and full of life. In fact, autumn is the season for nature lovers and photographers as the landscape turns into medley of colors; it is the season of harvest and abundance. It is a mesmerizing sight even when the leaves start dropping off their branches and float around the wind before falling to the ground.
Here is My YouTube Video on the Changing of Colors during the Fall
The Beauty of Fall (Autumn)And since time immemorial, writers and poets have dwelt upon this autumnal beauty.
John Keats on the Beauty of Autumn
Here is John Keats beginning his poem ‘To Autumn’
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Keats doesn’t mince words in describing the plenty of the autumn. In short, autumn is about plenty, bounty, harvest etc.
But, amidst that soul-relieving crunching of wet leaves during those long walks comes also the realization of aging and decay. It is the fact of nature that all living organisms rise and fall. The beauty does not last forever.
Here is Sara Teasdale:
“The leaves fall patiently
Nothing remembers or grieves
The river takes to the sea
The yellow drift of leaves.”
This sense of decay brings a deep sense of reflection, a sense of meditation on life and how to live it.
Here are some images that I captured during my walks along the Lake Ontario’s lakefront trail near Toronto in September and October 2022.
