This is an updated version of last year’s fall post from my old blog… If fall isn’t the time to refresh things, what is?
Welcome to autumn!
If you’re not already crazily, fantastically excited about this beautiful season, by the end of this post you should be. If you’re living in a part of the world where it’s not fall right now… well, feel free to live vicariously through those of us dancing around beneath gold and crimson leaves.
Autumn is cross country
running through damp woods, crunching moss and breathing cedar
nylon tights and leather jackets.
Daylight shrinking in an orchard while you
pluck fresh apples and press them into hot, sticky cider.
The aroma of cinnamon and nutmeg
pie crusts and pumpkin seeds.
Autumn is a season for lighting candles
letting flames flicker up fireplaces or through
pumpkins on porches,
wearing wool scarves to hide from
that chill in the air.
Your boots press prints into muddied sidewalks.
Morning runs in the dark before the pale sun rises
candy corn and tacky Halloween displays at the grocery store
a cup of ginger tea while listening to
everything else that reminds you that this
is the time to be alive.
Long walks home from a warm cafe
through the park
wherever you can inhale crisp-apple air
crunch over fallen leaves and feel like you’re one with a
changing universe where
anything is possible.
It’s the best time to get lost
in dusty books
explore old churches and pale sunlit woods
adventure.
Everything around you is starting to die, but it feels like the world is beginning again.
“Delicious autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns.”
– George Eliot
FALL: a to-do list for the city dweller
- make pumpkin-scented candles
- find a farmer’s market open late and buy apples and fall veggies
- get out to the countryside (okay, or just the suburbs) and pick up a pumpkin
- carve it
- drink hot chocolate
- take a walk someplace where the leaves are a million shades of orange and burgundy
- wear a huge wool sweater
- drink hot tea with both hands wrapped around the mug
- stand outside in the morning and breathe deep
- rake leaves into a giant pile and leap in, let them scatter like you’re five years old and laugh
- sit by the fireplace and read your favorite stories
- bake pumpkin bread and eat it
- roast pumpkin seeds afterwards
- turn off all the lights in your house and light all your candles instead
- walk through your favorite park on a windy day
- press leaves between the pages of heavy books and scrapbook them when they’re dry
- paint your nails or lips dark red
- make a bonfire
- snack on a handful of candy corn
- soak up the season – it’ll be short but stunning.
Kenaia Neumann 