I love autumn, for many reasons, perhaps mostly because it incites me to exhale, the season giving me permission to pause. The days shorten in proportion to the lengthening of my urge to nap. I wander instead of rushing, ponder instead of deciding, question instead of knowing. I love the fresh crisp mornings with a bit of a chilly bite, while I pull on a fresh hoody. The sun feels brighter, clearer, everything in focus. Autumn appears, at first glance, to be fickle or ambivalent, changing her mind in the blink of any eye whether to be a warm sunny day or a dreary blustery one. One minute I am basking in the beauty of oranges and yellows and reds, the sunshine on my face; the next I am running for cover to escape the wind and rain. I pull on a warm jacket when leaving the house for a walk only to shed said jacket from misjudgment minutes later.
The glorious wonder of autumn is the changing leaves. Aristotle pondered the mystery of the changing colour of leaves more than two thousand years ago in Greece. He knew there was a lesson to be learned. Maria Popova (themarginalian.org) reminds us in her writing of the difference between explorers and scientists: with explorers eagerly hammering in their flag of ‘discovery’ as if the land merely erupted in front of them in that very moment, unseen by any other eyes, enabling them to claim and name the land as their own. We know far too many names granted in this way. Whereas science, specifically Joseph Bienaimé Caventou and Pierre Joseph Pelletier, both pharmacists, who isolated chlorophyll in plants in 1817, recorded: “We have no right to name a substance long known, and to the story of which we have added on a few facts …” naming it chlorophyll. These two scientists were blessed with the humble awareness that all things were well established before they stumbled into the line-up of the curious, in “Paris, the capital of science during this era,” as per a paper on Photosynthesis Research published by Springer Nature in 2024, discussing all the many dives into the understanding of chlorophyll. We were told of the structure of chlorophyll and haemoglobin being quite similar, each with the four elements of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, circling around iron in haemoglobin, and magnesium in chlorophyll. Fascinating, don’t you think, that animals and trees, that we cut down with such cavalier vigour, share such a similarity.
The leaves changed their colour quickly this year, as if Mother Nature forgot, busy with her long list of other things, namely survival. In an instant, she waved her paint brush in my back yard with dramatic flair, generously splashing the hues of oranges and yellows, though a little selfish with the reds, in a swift wash as though it was merely a second thought from urgent matters. “Yes, yes, there you go,” she whispered dismissively, allowing the sun to shine for days and the wind to quiet so that we might be entreated to recognize our own humble and no less insignificant place in the scheme of things.
The falling leaves are the reminder that change is the one constancy we are burdened with in life, that we all share in the shift from birth to death, that no matter how desperately we cling to that which we deem essential to our existence: our youthful muscles, our elastic brains, our fluid joints, and those we love, our efforts are futile. It all marches on. Lucky us to have the seasonal reminder to celebrate rather than worry, to feel blessing rather than loss.
wendistewart@live.ca
