Transition From Summer To Fall Quotes

It was still late summer elsewhere, but here, high in Appalachia, fall was coming; for the last three mornings, she'd been able to see her breath. The woods, which started twenty feet back from her backdoor like a solid wall, showed only hints of the impending autumn. A few leaves near the treetops had turned, but most were full and green. Visible in the distance, the Widow's Tree towered above the forest. Its leaves were the most stubborn, tenaciously holding on sometimes until spring if the winter was mild. It was a transitional period, when the world changed its cycle and opened a window during which people might also change, if they had the inclination.

The city has seasons, but they’re muted, and the transition of summer to fall to winter has more to do with changing temperatures than it does with the leaves turning, or the trees getting bare, or the grass going from brown to green, or getting older.

Everybody winters at one time or another; some winter over and over again. Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness or life event such as bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition and have temporary falling between two worlds. Some winterings creep upon us more slowly, accompanying the protracted death of a relationship, the gradual ratcheting up of caring responsibilities as our parents age, the drip-drip-drip of lost confidence. Some are appallingly sudden, like discovering one day that your skills are considered obsolete, the company you worked for has gone bankrupt, or your partner is in love with someone new. However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful. Yet it’s also inevitable. We like to imagine that it’s possible for life to be one eternal summer and that we have uniquely failed to achieve that for ourselves. We dream of an equatorial habitat, forever close to the sun, an endless, unvarying high season. But life‘s not like that.

A fresh fig is a coy fruit. Fresh figs hide out a bit. Their exterior is sober, matte--- a dignified, often dusky, royal purple. But crack one open, and you have a pulpy, fleshy kaleidoscope of seeds. A ripe fig, like the cheeks of a well-fed child, should give slightly when you squeeze. Figs make an excellent transition from summer to autumn cuisine. This is particularly useful this time of year in Provence, when we are eating in the garden one day, turning on the heat the next. Fresh figs are at home alfresco, in a rocket salad with Golden Delicious apples, pine nuts, and picnic cheeses or roasted with slices of Roquefort and a drizzle of honey to begin a fall fireside dinner.

You know, you just kind of do the best you can and hold on to moments that feel a little better than others. You fall asleep and try not to think about the pressing time of past and future, compressing you from both ways, but you can’t let yourself get worried about it. You just have to try to fall asleep. And you put both feet on the ground when you wake up, seeing the sun that rose once again, despite it all, knowing that this is one of very few limited mornings that you will get to experience and you just have to stop carrying life like a burden. Life is not a burden. It’s not heavy to be alive. It’s weightless. It’s light as air. You’re just floating, a leaf through space, for a little while. You just have to learn to close your eyes more, or open them, when you can. You just have to learn to float with the current more, not fight against things. Change, movement, transitions ... you have to become one with the current. So what if you find yourself homeless and aimless, broke to the bones with no one to hold or call or care for? Go climb a mountain and sit above the world for an hour or two. Breathe in cleaner air and drink water falling through the cracks of the stones. Don’t take the photo and don’t share it with anyone. It’s still beautiful even if only you know about it. You hold this moment in your heart and you go forward for here, one step at a time, and you try to get moments like this, even with other people, down on the ground, and maybe sometimes you will find yourself crying at 4am by yourself but that’s all good. It’s all okay. Just soak up whatever life offers and don’t think too much about it. It’s all beautiful. Stop seeing life as a burden. Something heavy to carry. Life is not heavy. Life is weightless and you can dance through it like a thin fog a summer’s morning. It’s all beautiful.