Wild is the music of the autumnal wind

Wild is the music of the autumnal wind
Among the faded woods.
William Wordsworth “Book VI The Churchyard among the Mountains”, The Excursion 1814

 

Two days ago I was driving up Florentia, on the north side of Queen Anne, when I entered a tunnel of scarlet and gold. The maples danced like Moulin Rouge chorus girls. They were perfectly aligned on either side of the road, flashing their brilliant leaves like petticoats a-whirl, their delicate limbs swaying in the wind. It was a gift that lasted but a few heartbeats, until the clouds shifted and the leaves ceased pulsing.

 

This autumn has offered many moments of heart-bursting beauty. Such an autumn as I have never experienced in the Northwest, certainly not in this city that is often shrouded by endless varieties of greens and grays. A warm, dry September and the gradual cooling of October and November set us up perfectly for this year’s bounty of vibrant color.

 

The process itself is poetry: chemical pigments—carotenoids, anthocyanin, tannins—develop as chlorophyll production slows in the cooler weather. They mix and mingle, producing tones of bronze and gold, pumpkin orange, maroon and Burgundy red, and scarlets so deep they are almost purple. The leaves are incandescent, as if lit from inside. Their copper hues blaze on hillsides and urban avenues, they shimmer in the early morning light and radiate in the glow of sunset.

 

The riotous palette lasts until shortly after the first frost, which occurred yesterday. The drift of leaves towards earth is accelerating. On my run this morning it was clear and cold. Showers of crimson and golden foliage fell onto grass rimed in white. Soon we will be the Emerald City again, our firs and hemlocks, pines and madrone providing shelter, texture and tones of green to the soft grays and browns of winter.

 

The season has been a gift. It has given me yet another reason to be grateful for the grace this city has brought in the four years we have lived here.

 

A sense of place—a connection to my environment—is vital to me. It is perhaps why travel has long been at the core of my soul. The places I discover, try on, taste, listen to, interact in and dream of reflect what is most precious to me. Every village, town, state, and country in which I’ve lived and many in which I’ve travelled have left impressions that follow me around like a gaggle of shadow friends. Some—New Zealand, Ireland, the western slope of the Colorado Rockies, the deep hollows of Appalachian Ohio—have moved me, shifted my soul, altered the course of my life. It is these places I explore the most as I write, giving shape to characters and events through the lens of setting. I write of seashore and mountainside, of broken-down hamlet and hidden paradise, of antique markets and manicured gardens.

Other places—I think of France and of my backyard, Seattle—are too much a part of my present and immediate future to appear in my fictive scribbles. Though I do have plans for France: there is a story that’s been burning inside me for a couple of years, but it’s set in the past. My shadows will get walk-on parts, at best.

 

The November I returned to the Northwest, to call Seattle home for the first time, played itself out far differently than the colorful, sun-filled season now ending. That November was muted, sombre and wet. I arrived from late spring in New Zealand, where there is little pollution to block UV rays and the light is dazzling no matter the season, to the soft watercolors of the Northwest in late fall. My new-old surroundings cloaked me. I too was muted and sombre, a shadow of the vibrant soul I had been before being felled by deep, malignant depression. Re-entering this country in the season of darkness and chill gave me a chance to heal and rebuild in a cocoon of a cozy apartment, the bustling joy of holiday cheer, bursting coffee shops, and peaceful bookstores. As the city blew off the sodden leaves coating its lawns, as the light from the east broke into our bedroom earlier each day, as the season of renewal approached, I felt green shoots of hope and health bursting in my heart, even as the roots that connected me to this place grew deeper and held me fast, at long last.

 

And here again, as autumn drifts to winter, as day seeps toward the longest night, I am in my season of content and I am home. I am grateful for the beauty of this incomparable autumn, but I look forward to the rich darkness of winter that promises peace.