The leaves and plants are dying for the season…yet they glow in colors not seen any other time of the year.
Mushroom are still pushing up thought the soil.
Leaves fall, suspended…
…and cradled in the undergrowth.
Yellow reigns, but red pops here and there in the mushrooms, berries and oak leaves.
Autumn is my favorite season and I’m sure I have lots of company in that. It never feels to me like a season of dying, though, and it occurred to me that maybe “dying” isn’t right. So much of the natural world lives through the winter, but differently. At human scales of size and time a winter landscape looks dead but it’s not, and it’s not exactly “waiting” or “sleeping” either. It’s a cycle, each phase different but equal. I haven’t settled on a term to use instead, but I’m retiring “dying” as anything connected with fall. I want to find a description that doesn’t misapply a human state to a part of a cycle that isn’t part of our experience. Suggestions welcome!
I agree with you about the word “dying” Pete. It really isn’t accurate. It’s more of a slowing down, but I don’t have a word for it either. I feel it too this time of year, with the shorter days. But then I’m thinking of dying and death when it comes to humans differently too. The more time I spend in nature the more I rethink my ideas about death. Thanks for your thoughts.
I got this email from Susan about another word Pete. She couldn’t post it on my blog for some reason it wouldn’t go up, but I wanted everyone to be able to see it……
“Greetings, Pete, Maria, and the rest of this community!
“With all due respect for Maria’s wonderful pics & writing, ‘dying’ didn’t quite do it for me, either. But that’s primarily due to another blogger’s (Renee Roederer) post I read earlier this week about photosynthesis and the leaves turning. (Anyone can read that post here: https://reneeroederer.com/2026/10/01/revealed/). As I remembered it and/or what I took away from it, the leaves turning are reverting to their essence, i.e., they are being, not doing (the work of photosynthesis) or producing. Renee used the term ‘revealing,’ and that seems to make sense even after all the leaves have fallen, and we see the ‘bones’ of the trees more clearly (at least till they get buried in snow).
“Renee also nicely drew from this how we, too, as humans sometimes need and have seasons of being rather than just producing, which in our society is definitely countercultural.
“And, it seems to me, there’s a correlation to the cycles of a day and the cycle of seasons. We can create, like Maria and many of us who also attempt it, a time of just being through meditation and other practices.
“So possible alternatives to dying: revealing, being, essencing (if we want an entirely new word).
“And again, Maria, this in no way takes away from your beautiful writing. In fact, it has sparked the creative thinking of Pete and myself, so many, many thanks.”