Autumn in Joy!

by Sherrill Layton

​AUTUMN usually makes me giggle and it is my favorite time of the year. Why? Well, it seems to hold such promise in its air and a bit of a rumbling danger underfoot, as if to say, “You there! You are bound for a wonderful adventure!” The two elements together give me a bit of a squish, an earth hug, if you will, telling me that no matter what, everything is going to be all right. I like to think of myself as an optimist, but, on the odd encounter of this article, sheer idealism has brought me to naught, so AUTUMN steps in and brings forth a kind of realistic boundary to the future. It reminds me not to get ahead of myself in an unhealthy way. Goals are meant to be set, but not for the likes of a Sage, just for average disciples like me.

​My head is a bit clearer in the fall, less full of mind-chatter and slightly more at ease with itself. Less judgmental and endearing, I can walk around in a generally open way, relatively free from the expectations that I usually put on others and myself. As a youth, it meant the school year had already gotten underway, so practical preparations would fill the time slot of an otherwise overactive imagination. I would be guided by the simpler facts and needs of a formal education.
 
One keen memory sticks out for me. I think it was just around the time I had already been in school for a month or so, right at that tender age of seven. I was leaving fairies and dwarves to their forests and inviting the reality of a mature, if scary, world. I grew up at the base of a mountain with an inlet of the Pacific Ocean rolling just below it.

The weather always invited a good time, yet it would shift and shimmy with amazing downpours. They were not quite monsoon, of course, but regular and true throughout the year, unforgivably dousing the land and rendering it evergreen beyond compare. The best playground on Earth, I think. Thrashing about in large wet piles of recently fallen leaves was something I had always done and that one day struck when the leaves were present but only a part of me wanted to roll around in them. The other more mature part of me kept the act from happening. I remember a glad sadness in the fact that I would not be participating in such childlike action. No aftermath bath or succumbing to the fated flu that I always had caught a week later.

Death to a part of me or the sneaky common sense of a young adult?

​I do not know which and perhaps the answer is—both. Swiftly, the fall from innocence relaxed into its knowledge just as the fire-red maple leaf turns itself over to the ground below—and so the "splitting" had begun.

Photo by Grant McCurdy

These days, some 40 years later, I make an effort to return to innocence, to get back into the autumn leaves. Alas, my teenagers have their own definition of joy, which naturally does not include me, but I don't mind—I have Nature to cruise with, and she consistently provides me with great company! In Israel, there are never quite enough leaves to roll in exactly, but I swish them with my feet and look for heart-shaped leaves to place atop Tel Yodfat, reflecting the section of joy in my heart that's kept for the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and the kid I've never forgotten.

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​Sherrill Layton is an editor, writer, and media ecologist with her own PR group, promoting local, earth-conscious small businesses. From social media to academic articles, Sherrill focuses on honest relations and loving kindness. 

You can find her on Twitter & LinkedIn.

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