Creative Curations Vol. 3: Autumn

magic, mystery, and mourning with hope

What is your favorite season?

It’s no secret that mine is autumn.

The autumn I was twelve (30 years ago this year!), I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time.

I wrote about the experience in an essay, How to Kill a Mockingbird and Other Family Observations. Here are a couple paragraphs from the essay:

Through To Kill a Mockingbird, I entered Scout’s world. I saw the old town of Maycomb through her coming-of-age eyes. Finally, in the last pages of the novel, I saw the story through Boo Radley’s eyes, as Scout’s perspective momentarily adopts the view of her reclusive neighbor. I read the book in autumn, which was slowly approaching after a too-long summer.

In Fresno, summer seems to last 10 months or more, and autumn maybe a week or two. Something about my 12^th autumn was magical. Watching the leaves change, looking out at my front yard tree through Boo Radley’s and Scout’s gaze, made me feel a strange blend of magic and mystery and longing.

I had never been so strongly affected by a book as I was that autumn. C. S. Lewis, in my favorite fictional work of his, Til We Have Faces, wrote, “It was when I was happiest that I longed most . . . The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing . . . to find the place where all the beauty came from.”

For me, those sweetest longings often arise from books. I have a feeling I’m not the only one.

That autumn was kind of a coming-of-age time for me, but it was not through a quest or adventure I embarked on … it was through a story.

I reflect on this in another piece I wrote several autumns ago:

The first brush of autumn on leaves and in the air always makes me think of a book I read in late childhood. Something about the magic and wonder it stirred makes me return to it time and again, at least in my mind.

It is a few paragraphs, or maybe just one, toward the end. (Maybe my wonder at these words only speaks to the fact that most books I read up to that time weren't highest quality.)

But it's more than that. It was a longing for that mystery.

At the time I read it, the main intent of the book passed me by completely. The part that stuck was the image of a girl turning towards some future, some adulthood that would come eventually and that she didn't quite understand or even know of just yet ... Seen through the eyes of a character who watched from the outside—caring, knowing, protecting.

Maybe I wanted a watcher. Someone who knew the days that lay ahead and who knew the child's heart within and understood the measure of magic that every autumn holds in its rush of color and life before the world spins to a season of silence.

When you’re an adult the seasons pass so quickly. The months fly by and there’s rarely anything that invites us to slow things down.

We tell each other, “We’ll take a break after this” but then we keep going, pushing, keeping busy—driven by necessity to pay the bills, to keep the household running, and sometimes driven by some thing we can’t quite explain.

Autumn serves as that invitation to pause, look around, take note of drifting leaves vibrant in their dying and ask questions that arise only in such a season.

autumn gathering

This is how the poet Lloyd Schwartz puts it.

Every October it becomes important, no, necessary
to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded
by leaves turning; it's not just the symbolism,
to confront in the death of the year your death …

But it’s not just death or the idea of it that we look upon in vibrant color during autumn. It’s something more, and it calls us to something more. Victoria over at The Autumn Chronicles writes:

“Now we are embedded in autumn, season of reflection, of letting go of what no longer serves us, it is the perfect time to contemplate where we are.”

This is from her terrific essay “A ‘To Be’ List” in which she also asks:

“What if, instead of focusing on measuring our value by our productivity, we focused on the qualities with which we would like to show up in the world? …

We all know that we cannot pour from an empty cup. Protecting our energy by focusing on being rather than doing, helps us to approach things differently.”

Approaching things differently can involve words and art, or even the lack of words. Joe Callender uses photography to wax eloquent when he struggles to find the words. All of these photographs are invitations of a sort, and his last photo in the post, a pondering at the change of seasons and the start of autumn.

Photo by Joe Callender from Art Think Make

Rosa Gilbert shares a gorgeous blessing for the autumnal equinox. I urge you to read the entire poem (in her post you can also listen to Rosa reading it aloud), but here are a few apt lines:

Embrace the reds, oranges, yellows to come.
Mourn as those who have hope,
like the tree losing its leaves weeps
for that which shall return to him.

I am drawn to the idea of mourning “as those who have hope.” We are not told not to mourn. Gandalf does not tell his friends not to weep, saying that not all tears are an evil.

Autumn: a mingling of magic, mystery, and mourning with hope.

I know that the season is well underway for some. It’s been nearly a month since the official autumn equinox.

But I waited on this post because it didn’t yet feel like fall, at least here. (Last week, it was still 100+ degrees.) But finally, the mornings are beginning to cool.

Finally, that welcome mix of mystery and magic settles in the air—like a call from someone who knows the days that lie ahead to the child's heart that resides within—offering a rush of color and life before the world spins to silence.

autumn glimpses

Other autumn tidbits from the Substack-verse:

Amanda Leigh offers an autumn reading list along with some fall book suggestions from her readers.

Austin Kleon—whose favorite season is also fall—shares a collection of autumnal things.

Jodie Melissa at Slower Space gives some ideas on how to celebrate the fall season, including seasonal baking, morning walks, journaling, and gathering with friends.

Caitlyn from Milk Fed talks about the two types of autumn and shares seasonal lists of what she’s reading and eating. At the end of her post, she shares a list of “autumn things that make me happy.”

What autumn things bring you joy?