Autumn Is In The Air
Most years since the turn of the century, this column has found itself tumbling into that mellow period which marks mid-to-late-September, and declaring: “Autumn is in the air!” as if it’s been some totally new and unexpected sensation.
Which is odd… I hardly ever write newspaper articles which herald the arrival of winter or summer. Once or twice I have written about the first hints and glories of spring, but there’s something about the end of summer and the coming of autumn which seems to reach the parts other seasons fail to awaken.
I wonder why this particular corner of the calendar seems to mean so much? Perhaps I am alone or unusual in noticing it to such a degree - so I’d be interested to hear if readers agree that autumn is a mental and spiritual game-changer.
Of course, it’s easy to cook up some half-baked theory… My belief is that we northern Europeans are hard-wired to feel a sense of excitement and urgency when nature’s harvests are at their peak. Our inner time-clocks know a long hard winter is ahead and some inherited memory tells some of us that we’d better belt around trying to collect and conserve as much as we can.
Squirrels do it, so why shouldn’t we? If a tiny creature with a brain the size of a pea can know that it’s time to gather nuts and store them away for the hard times ahead, is it really out of the question that we highly motivated and complex humans should have failed to evolve a similar kind of autopilot?
Gather all you can and squirrel as much as possible away! It must have been a clarion call which the instincts of homo-sapiens relied upon for thousands of years. Why else would modern people like me feel some inner urge to start gathering fruits, berries and fungi and start pickling, bottling, drying and practicing other forms of food preservation when the cooler evenings descend? I realise a lot of people don’t have this domestic drive, but I do - and I know quite a few others who feel it as well.
Not that anyone has ever told us this is a vital, do-or-die, thing to be doing. We may have read about it or learned that certain peoples and societies did it in times gone by, but it’s not as if we modern Brits were ever tied to our mothers’ apron strings with the mantra: “Pick and preserve! Hoard and hide! Gather the goodness while you can!” ringing in our ears.
For me the natural body-clock phenomenon is a thing of joy. It means that somehow we are deeply in touch with nature, which must be a good thing. And perhaps there is something inside a grumpy old countryman like me which almost celebrates the idea of hunkering down and semi-hibernating.
How can a city-dweller living in a block of flats ever experience the unbelievably satisfying sense of cosiness which comes of lighting that first-log-fire-of-the-season as wind and rain beat upon the windows?
As autumn really gets underway you can embrace the word “snug” as you pull the duvet up under your chin on a wild night, imagining the raging Atlantic waves exploding over sea-cliffs just a few miles to the west. You lie there in the dark thinking how lucky you are to be so wonderfully comfortable - and how fortunate you are to be able to work from home at your desk in the morning when other poor blighters will be up telegraph poles fixing wires that have been blown down, or herding cattle on some god-forsaken heath, or setting out into the maelstrom in their fishing boats.
You begin to dream of comforting soups and stews and other warming edible delights which make the dark half of the year so much more survivable and pleasant. You stock your pantry with the pulses you harvest, the mushrooms you pick and dry and with the orchard fruit you’ve gathered from the garden. Then there’s the sloe gin and other liquid delights you’ll be macerating until the December festivities.
At this point I can hear a few sun-worshippers groan: “What’s this old geezer on about? He’s already looking forward to Christmas!”
But, no, I’m not. This is very much about living in the moment - taking the time to rejoice in those hardly perceptible creaks and groans as the Earth turns slowly on its axis and you can almost feel one season changing into another.
It’s about stopping for a moment as you pick the last of the blackberries because you catch the season’s first whiff of firewood-smoke. It’s about seeing the sudden blaze of gold as a beech tree’s slowly reddening leaves catch the last light of a warm evening sun. It’s about coming home over the ridge after a long afternoon’s walk, listening to the mewing of this year’s brood of buzzards flying high above, and seeing wisps of mist gathering like a phantom sea across the lowlands beyond.
Summer turning into autumn acts like a tsunami on our sensory faculties. In the countryside you can see it, hear it, smell it - and you can feel it on your skin as cooling zephyrs from the north waft up from the sea. This brief period of change is the season of the senses.
