How beautiful the season is now...I will need to enjoy it before winter

“How beautiful the season is now--How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather--Dian skies--I never liked stubble-fields so much as now--Aye better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm--in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.” John Keats


On Sunday, I went apple picking for the first time (at least that I can remember--my dad swears that he took me as a kid and that there are orchards in California). And, it was the most beautiful autumn day.

As a native Californian, I had been told by my Midwest and East Coast friends that I had never really experienced the “true” seasons. I always defended my beloved state by saying that in the Bay Area we do have our own versions of the seasons and have some variety of color and temperature (in So Cal, however, we really only have Summer and “Light Summer”). But I learned this weekend that nothing is quite like a real Autumn: clear crisp chilly air, pale blue skies smeared with bright clouds, a plethora of color in the trees that sway in a light breeze. What I think the Bay Area misses is that clear transition into another part of the year, which I think is what truly makes Autumn feel more like an event, more like a purposeful move by nature to continue on its way. Last month, the weather had been holding onto summer, and then all it once the air dropped to just above chilly and the trees turned fiery red and orange. The air even felt and smelled differently-- the balmy weather of summer left and the lighter air of autumn arrived.

And, I think that’s what people like about distinct seasons in general; it feels like a different time of year. Those who are in school usually measure time by semesters--we know summer is over when school starts. And, the constant newness is refreshing, new teachers/ students, new classes, new projects. But for those of us who have entered the ever monotonous existence out of the school system, it is good to measure time with nature. I can’t generalize these feelings to everyone, but for me at least, it’s nice to feel as if time is progressing; it’s satisfying to see change around me when my life no longer has that constant newness that I thrive on.

It isn’t to say that my life hasn’t changed in big ways; I’ve moved states and we’ve just closed on a house today--but they don’t feel like my personal accomplishments. And, moving somewhere, for me, is a very slow immersion process. It takes awhile for it to sink in and to feel as if my life has changed. Life is more than just a place; it’s a job, it’s friends and family, it’s habits, it’s favorite restaurants and mostly, it’s school. Illinois may look a little different with it’s open spaces and flatness, but it’s not as if I feel like I live in a different country. It’s not as if I feel any different now that my person is in another state. And, especially with our modern technology, Skype, Facebook, airplanes, email, I don’t think distance and place really mean that much anymore--technology has eliminated these boundaries (And, I‘ve never been one to get homesick, no matter where I‘ve been). The biggest difference I can find is that the people are much more friendly here.

The changing seasons also remind me that the year is almost over, and it inspires me to work and write and accomplish--reminds me to keep progressing forward with my goals because nothing is permanent and the year is moving on without me. It may be morbid, but the dying world serves as a reminder that I only get one life and I need to make it count--which brings me back to my beloved Keats.

“Dying” may not be the best descriptive for Autumn, though that may be what literally is happening. When I went apple picking in a small orchard in Wisconsin, I didn’t see death--I was overwhelmed by life, which is what Keats found so inspiring on his Autumn walk. The sun was bright, and the trees were weighted down with apples. The air smelled sickly sweet because of the rotting and half-eaten apples littering the ground-- it felt like I was walking through apple juice. Anyways, I finally could truly understand why he wrote a poem “To Autumn”:


SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies

Autumn here is at once teeming with life but also subtle in its beauty and calm. In the first stanza, the season brings an overabundance: everything “swells” and is “plump” and “ripe” with life. However, the season paradoxically alleviates the strain that comes with its overabundant creativity. For instance, the coolness of autumn comes as a relief from the “warm days” of summer that felt as if they would “never cease”; the harvest lightens the trees that “bend” with fruit. In the second stanza, the abundance has been harvested, and there is a lazy calm that comes with this wealth--the sense of urgency that I feel is not present in this poem yet. The hours of autumn are slow, “drowsy,” and “oozing” forward. It’s as if the earth is falling asleep into winter. At the farm, the apples were so ripe that they were falling off the trees and rotting on the ground--autumn is they very picture of life and death, which I think is what makes this season so unique. In the third stanza the music of autumn seems that of preparation for parting--Autumn is the anticlimax of the year, but a beautiful one. The poem helps us appreciate the beauty of both the plentitude of the season and the death that lies underneath the surface. Autumn IS the passing of the seasons, of time. Life is full of both creative moments and movement towards an end.

Although the poem is about the season, it is also “about” the harvesting of one’s own teeming mind (if you don't harvest, all you will have is rotting fruit?). Just like the season, this poem reminds me (us) to create (whatever it is that you create) and to appreciate all that life has to offer… before it’s winter.