Our Autumn woods are poised in a brief magic moment of calm. We enjoy it while the season lasts. It’s time to remember Michaelmas and the work of angels.
An Autumn Wood
Extraordinary satisfaction….. Autumn seems stationery within this lovely weather, an end reached, that is more calmly enjoyable than restless changing Spring & summer too splendid to last, whereas this seems to be what autumn led to & we aim – consciously refusing to consider Winter as an end.”
Edward Thomas writing in 1915 in his notebook.
Here in this wood the air is still and filled with the musty smells of autumn. This year’s leaf fall is also beginning to colour the trees. The silence is only broken briefly by the scolding call of a squirrel and a blackbird’s alarm cry. The crunch of leaves and the crack of a twig under our feet disturbs a wood pigeon. With our restless, noisy human world outside forgotten, this wood is a place that restores and refreshes us. The heart listens easily here
‘But Nature’s works far lovelier. I admire,
……..sweet Nature every sense.
The air salubrious of her lofty hills,
The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales,
And music of her woods—no works of man
May rival these; these all bespeak a power
Peculiar, and exclusively her own.
Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast;
’Tis free to all—’tis ev’ry day renewed‘.From ‘The Garden’ in ‘Sofa’ by William Cowper
Autumn Fungi
Out of decay, beauty arises, the coloured fungi showing that the wood-wide-web is still working. The stillness speaks of nature’s timespan. There is no rush here yet everything is moving forward at nature’s pace. We learn the wisdom of the woods here.
Michaelmas
With the flowering of the Michaelmas daisies and the start of the Michaelmas Term at colleges, schools, and the legal world, we are reminded that September 29th is ‘St Michael and all Angels’ Day. In medieval England, as one of the Quarter Days, it marked the ending of the harvest when the bailiff, or reeve, of the manor would be making out the accounts for the year. As we celebrate the feast of the Archangel Michael and his role in defeating the fallen angel, Lucifer, it is a reminder to think of the work of angels and also of the coming end-times of the ‘harvest’ of the world. (See my post Michaelmas – angels unawares).
Embracing the Season and its beauty.
I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellow, its colors are richer and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content.
Lin Yutang, 20th Century Chinese writer.
If we allow it, autumn can introduce us to ‘the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age that knows the limitations of life and is content.’
We too can ‘find solace in the whispered falling of a leaf and the permission it gives to stop and drop things we’ve been carrying and embrace the season and its beauty.’
