I love Autumn.
And not just for the deliciousness of the season...I love REAL pumpkin spice everything (not that fake chemical/lab-created crap y'all call Pumpkin Spice Lattes), I LOVE homemade applesauce and apple butter. Baking anything on a crisp, Autumn morning just seems right.
Beyond that, I love what the season represents. To many, it represents a time of death and entering a long period of death...we don't see many signs of life in the winter, but they're there, I assure you! I love that during the first stages of fall, trees automatically release Abcisic Acid (ABA) that triggers the leaves to fall off. First, of course, they begin to lose that vibrant green color giving us a glorious show of reds, oranges, and browns. The reason for this is trees do not need the food/energy created through the leaves. So they just drop them. They literally drop the leaves which no longer serve them. Except the leaves DO continue to serve...as they break down at the trunk of the tree, the leaves enrich the soil, creating rich soil for the tree and other plants to thrive in.
And then, they go dormant. They withstand some tough elements, fully exposed and naked. They can become ice covered, snow covered, heat covered. They are exposed to biting winds which can threaten to break their tender branches. But they stand tall and strong (in most cases), knowing they are but dormant versions of their full being. They are merely resting up for a stunning display of buds and colors in a few month's time.
And then, somehow by the miracle of Nature, the buds return. And the flowers follow the buds. Before you know it, as the days begin to heat up, the trees are fully covered in their gorgeous, bright green leaves; providing food for the tree and cooling shade for us humans.
I love that Mother Nature just does this automatically.
And I love that Mother gives us this reminder to do the same in our own lives. We must each go through periods of, metaphorically speaking, releasing ABA to trigger an automatic dropping of that which no longer serves us. We must slow down our food and energy creation/consumption in order to rest up. We must tend to ourselves, sometimes silently, in order to burst forth with color and be able to serve others later. We must remind ourselves that our periods of Autumn and Winter are more than just periods of death, they are periods of our lives which allow rebirth to occur!
These times of our lives, and these trees in our lives, are truly Majestic and should be honored as such. They also beg of us to ask the important questions: What needs to be shed (what/who is no longer serving us), what do we need to shed ourselves away from (who/what are we no longer serving?) What do we need to do to slow it down? What will our rebirth look like? Who will we serve during our next phase? ahh yes, my friends, I love this season for what it brings us outside and the change it can inspire inside. Majestic.
