#242: Visceral Fall

There is such a pervasive power in the rhythm of nature that I sometimes find I can’t even perceive it because I’m so deeply in it. We are PART of nature, after all. Reading Brynne’s words made me feel like a kid again, remembering crisp afternoons in the yard, ploughing through freshly raked piles of leaves. It reminds me that I’m still connected to the rhythm, even if I can’t always hear the beat.

-Corey

VISCERAL FALL

By Brynne Thompson

When I sat down to write, I kept thinking about how visceral this season has felt. How urgent, how moving.. There was arresting beauty, and deep foreboding, and it struck me that those combined experiences ARE autumn itself, so maybe the idea is to seep into it and experience what nature is showing me.

In addition, this wasn’t a usual autumn, as I observed it. The wild animals surrounding our house were acting 100% wacky. When the neighbors sign went up I thought, hmmm, we are all experiencing this season together, and it feels different, together. I took my lead from these oddly behaving animals and started to observe more. This is what came out.

Fall

I

The wind whips up a cyclone of yellow leaves, surrounding my car. I coast around the corner. Foot off the gas, foot off the brake. The “most dangerous corner” in our town.

The sun shoots through the swirl, saffron yellow everywhere.

The noise deafening.

In seconds I was through, and it was gone.

Remaining dust bunnies of leaves rustling in small swirls all around.

I exhale loud.

Full, then empty.

Fall came delicately. Copper, turmeric, cinnamon leaves detach at the stem neatly, one at a time, and float.

Float from the great oak and ash trees, sixty or seventy feet high. Rocking back and forth, back and forth, until laid on the ground, like a baby in a cradle, or laid to rest, I don’t know.

Falling all the same.

II

The leaves are crunchy, magnetic to walk through. The joy of crushing underfoot, one of the oldest sensations in my memory.

Then the rain comes, amassing piles of leaves into fiber and cellulose to collect over the drain. Clogging. Blocking.

The leaves keep churning, taking hit after hit of water rushing down the asphalt, and transform into middle-earth compost, slippery, gelatinous. Repulsing to touch, to step on, to squish in. It reaches into my socks, cold and wet.

It all falls down the drain. Back into the earth in an oozing heap, completing this portion of living, of dying.

Falling all the same.

III

Pumpkins are placed on doorsteps, some complete, some carved.

The squirrels dart around them, and then turnabout and set on them completely. They claw at them, tear them open with small, mighty mania. Up and down our road they feast, never satisfied.

A neighbor cuts a small piece of cardboard, puts it on a stake and places it in front of the gaping smiles of his cratered jack-o-laterns.

“Watch out for the squirrels, they will rip your face off!”

I laugh, and my laugh turns into a cackle. Rip your face off.

Two weeks later there is only a pile of dried seeds. A few tendrils of pumpkin fiber. All that while for the squash to grow... and now this.

What do the squirrels know ?

IV

There is something acrid in the air. The deer grazing across the street smell it. The animals are quieter. I stand on the hilltop too. Breathing it in. Something coming. Soon.

This fall is not delicate, it is not a dance in the air, a beautiful swirl of yellow and cerulean sky. It’s not that, not anymore.

V

The leaves are all landed, all well on their way to the next part of their contribution. But I don’t feel that peace. I miss them. Where is the ground?

Now I want the clarity of dark afternoons and the pinch of freezing evergreen.

I want the perfect direction and perfect timing of winter: now it is night, now it is day.

Now it is time to stay in.

Now it is time to bust out.

I want to know what the squirrels know.