The Pleasure of Autumn
It occurred to me this morning as I was on my morning walk, crisp air biting at my nose and the crunch of brown and fading leaves beneath my feet, as I looked up in wonder at the blazing leaves on the trees, lit against the brightest blue sky: Autumn is the season of sensual pleasure.
It’s in the way the air greets you when you take a deep breath, catching you ever so slightly off guard and challenging you to breathe deeper. Hold on a minute; take another breath, wasn’t that cold? It’s so refreshing, it wakes up something deep inside. Some stirring of childhood that thrills at the change in the season, that marvels at the sudden difference in the world.
The smell of summer has faded and is crunching against your shoes, worn out and cast away and beginning to decay, becoming compost to rot between the roots of trees in the darkness of the winter months. And the sound it makes as it crunch – crunch – crunches is so delightful, so simple, so beautiful. It happens again and again. It is so satisfying that each time your foot takes a step that lands on bare earth, you look to correct yourself by stepping out of step, to step again on the leaves. Crunch. The sound makes you relax. Crunch, crunch… crunch. It’s rhythmic, it begins to create a musician of you, it tickles at your senses and makes you want to dance. Even when upset, the very action of the resoluteness of the crunch is so deeply satisfying.
And then, of course, a pleasure greater to Eve than hanging out nude with her lover in the garden for all of eternity: the first bite of that perfect flesh. There, on the gnarled lichened branch, a blushing apple. The fruit of all temptation. For months now, each and every time we pass those twisted apple trees, the apples call to me. And every time we stop to search those gnarled arms, or lately just to root among the leaves on the ground in search of any remaining fallen, I am humbled. The first bite of apple fresh off a tree is so beautiful. The way the peel resists and then gives, the sound of the crunch, the splash of juice. That clear, cold taste that instantly nourishes. And then the second bite, and the third, and every bite that follows. It’s tart, it’s sweet. It’s complete. It compliments the breeze. It pays homage to the heat of the summer. It sparkles against the clear blue sky and it laughs in the sunshine. It makes me wonder how I could bother to eat apples at any other time of year. I fall in love and it is weightless. I breathe deeply and I am moved. I look up at the fire in the sky that dances on the branches of the trees and I lose myself in that blue, endless blue, and then I am pulled into the twisting spiral of the falling leaves that dance with the wind and it is such a pleasure, it is my pleasure, to be here now. To be incarnate. To have life. I breathe deeply and my soul gives thanks.