Last Saturday morning, I sat upon the face of a cliff and waited for the sun. Despite the chill in the predawn air, when sunrise came, it quickly burned away the vestigial wisps of an overnight fog bank. What the sun revealed was a sight that stole my breath. Before me stretched the whole of the Blue Ridge escarpment robed in the full glory of autumn. From valleys the peaks rose, drenched in the burnished gold of oaks, chased with the ruby and garnet hues of maple trees and studded occasionally with the deep blue-green of firs – jeweled thrones for the Gods of Earth and Sky.
Fall is my favorite time of year. Winters in the American South are damp and dreary. The spring pollen bloom plays merry hell with my allergies, and I’m afraid I’m just not built for the heat of the summer. But fall is something else, wrapped in wonder, clothed in beauty, the fulfillment of longing and desire. It is a time of promises kept, of harvests gathered in, of the circle of life brought to its fruition.
But autumn has always held a bittersweet allure, and its joy is haunted by specters: for if the harvest was the great gift of Life, for the ancients, it was also the toll with which they paid the King of Death. To the ancient Celts, their harvest feast, Samhain (which we celebrate tomorrow as “Halloween”
, was also the Feast of the Dead. It was the night when the barrier separating the world of the Living from the kingdom of the Dead grew thinnest. This is always the lesson of autumn: that life walks the razor’s edge with death. We see it in the last glory of the leaves before they fall, in the compulsive rutting of the buck, driven to spread his seed before the winter sets in, in the desperate foraging of the bear, building up fat to hold him through the long sleep.
This is the natural rhythm of life. Before transcontinental travel and supermarkets, artificial preservatives and microwave dinners, this was all that man ever knew: the turning of the seasons; the grinding of the wheel; life yielding inexorably to death. The harvest represented a promise fulfilled – but it was also a reminder of hard times past and hard times to come. Once the sheaves were gathered in, there would be no more. Not tomorrow, not next month, not for another year. The very bounty of the harvest was a symbol of the precariousness of existence. So, if autumn was a time of celebration, it was also a time of reflection, a time of taking stock, a time to prepare for the iron cold and gathering darkness.
I believe that civilizations, like the people that constitute them, are bound by natural cycles. In youth, they show the promise of springtime, which the long slog of summer brings to brilliant fruition in autumn, before passing into winter and death, only to give birth to a new civilization from the ashes. But for there to be ashes, a flame must be kept banked in the darkness, against the coming of the light.
I believe firmly that we stand in the autumn glory of a grand civilization. We have constructed the greatest edifices mankind has ever known; we leap continents as if it were no more than a trip down the lane; we communicate at the speed of thought; we have put our footprint on the moon. But where do we go from here? For all our accomplishments, we still have conquered neither death nor our own baser instincts: selfishness, blinkered pride and unchecked desire. In these lie the seeds of our destruction. And so, I leave you with a challenge. In the midst of the revelry, pause to reflect. While yet another generation of plastic ghouls comes to your door in search of prefab treats, take time and take stock. Ask yourself this:
If winter comes tomorrow, will I be ready?
Fall is my favorite time of year. Winters in the American South are damp and dreary. The spring pollen bloom plays merry hell with my allergies, and I’m afraid I’m just not built for the heat of the summer. But fall is something else, wrapped in wonder, clothed in beauty, the fulfillment of longing and desire. It is a time of promises kept, of harvests gathered in, of the circle of life brought to its fruition.
But autumn has always held a bittersweet allure, and its joy is haunted by specters: for if the harvest was the great gift of Life, for the ancients, it was also the toll with which they paid the King of Death. To the ancient Celts, their harvest feast, Samhain (which we celebrate tomorrow as “Halloween”
, was also the Feast of the Dead. It was the night when the barrier separating the world of the Living from the kingdom of the Dead grew thinnest. This is always the lesson of autumn: that life walks the razor’s edge with death. We see it in the last glory of the leaves before they fall, in the compulsive rutting of the buck, driven to spread his seed before the winter sets in, in the desperate foraging of the bear, building up fat to hold him through the long sleep.This is the natural rhythm of life. Before transcontinental travel and supermarkets, artificial preservatives and microwave dinners, this was all that man ever knew: the turning of the seasons; the grinding of the wheel; life yielding inexorably to death. The harvest represented a promise fulfilled – but it was also a reminder of hard times past and hard times to come. Once the sheaves were gathered in, there would be no more. Not tomorrow, not next month, not for another year. The very bounty of the harvest was a symbol of the precariousness of existence. So, if autumn was a time of celebration, it was also a time of reflection, a time of taking stock, a time to prepare for the iron cold and gathering darkness.
I believe that civilizations, like the people that constitute them, are bound by natural cycles. In youth, they show the promise of springtime, which the long slog of summer brings to brilliant fruition in autumn, before passing into winter and death, only to give birth to a new civilization from the ashes. But for there to be ashes, a flame must be kept banked in the darkness, against the coming of the light.
I believe firmly that we stand in the autumn glory of a grand civilization. We have constructed the greatest edifices mankind has ever known; we leap continents as if it were no more than a trip down the lane; we communicate at the speed of thought; we have put our footprint on the moon. But where do we go from here? For all our accomplishments, we still have conquered neither death nor our own baser instincts: selfishness, blinkered pride and unchecked desire. In these lie the seeds of our destruction. And so, I leave you with a challenge. In the midst of the revelry, pause to reflect. While yet another generation of plastic ghouls comes to your door in search of prefab treats, take time and take stock. Ask yourself this:
If winter comes tomorrow, will I be ready?
