“October is the
month for painted leaves,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. “Their rich glow now
flashes round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a
bright tint just before they fall, so the year nears its setting. October is
its sunset sky; November the later twilight.”
It’s interesting
to think of this month as the sunset of the year. Having spent nearly a month
in Iceland this past summer, it was jarring to return to Winnipeg after Labour
Day with its shorter daylight hours. The abrupt loss of nearly an hour of
daylight was unsettling and, although the days are now shorter in Iceland,
having passed the fall equinox, I found myself experiencing each day’s sunset
as premature.
Fallen maple leaves on the pavement in Ottawa. (Photo by Heather Jonasson.) |
It’s curious that
the waning of the year, with its diminished light, brings out nature’s
brightest and most varied colours. Sure, there’s plenty of brown and grey to go
around, but they are only the background for the bright red and orange, amber
and lingering hints of green, while the blue of sky and water seems to deepen.
Autumn is as colourful as the people who, having completed their life’s work
and having moved beyond its folly, settle down to simply be themselves.
This reminds me
of the familiar and much loved words of the English poet Jenny Joseph: “When I
am an old woman I shall wear purple / With a red hat which doesn’t go, and
doesn't suit me.” She goes on to say that she will “make up for the sobriety of
my youth” and “pick the flowers in
other people’s gardens.” Who among us hasn’t most cherished our ammas and
langammas* when they have been the old woman in purple – the one who laughs off
life’s vanities and simply dwells in the fruition of the present moment,
content that life’s harvest is enough? Who among us doesn’t long for the day
when we, too, will be the old woman or old man in purple?
It would be easy to think of October as the soberest of all months, but
perhaps its riotous colours should be seen instead as an invitation to be our
most daring selves. While rushing about to make the most of the days that
remain before the snow flies, this is a good time to harvest the fruits that
lie about us, whether or not they are of our own planting, and to let the
sobriety of youth give way to the joy of fulfillment.
Let us radiate the brighter hues of our lives, like the painted leaves of October, so that this season glows with the rich colours each of us brings to the world and we ourselves shine through the light of its sunsets.
Let us radiate the brighter hues of our lives, like the painted leaves of October, so that this season glows with the rich colours each of us brings to the world and we ourselves shine through the light of its sunsets.
* Icelandic for grandmothers and great-grandmothers.
This post appears as the editorial in the October 1, 2016, issue of Lögberg-Heimskringla.