The Brevity of Autumn Teaches us to Pay Attention

 

Some people find autumn and winter depressing and prefer spring and summer. 

I am not among that group.  To me, the brevity of a gorgeous, Alaskan fall is a very visible message to appreciate each day, each morning, each rapidly changing view.  Part of the reason is psychological: Because THIS WILL NOT LAST, so enjoy it.  Part of the reason is practical: the changes of fall and winter contribute to the fecundity of spring and summer.

Sometimes, we need to be hit on the head with important reminders like this.  Autumn does both.  It feels transient but it is benefits are long lasting.  

Sadly, I have two friends whose cancers have metastasized.  Both are using phrases like, “I will never see X or Y again.”  I think of them as I watch the leaves drop to the ground.  Is this their last autumn? Some of us know when death is right around the corner, but others are caught off guard.   We are lucky who enjoy a springtime youth, a summer’s middle age, and transitions to autumnal and then winter’s old age.  Not everyone does.  Fall drives that message home.  

So I luxuriate in the beauties of the season.   I stare in awe of electric yellow birch and larch trees (the latter is the only conifer that sheds its needles), framed by purple mountains.    I inhale the earthy aroma of high bush cranberries and the tannic scents of crispy leaves as my boots shuffle through the accumulating piles of red, orange, yellow, and brown that  flutter gracefully to the ground.    I harvest rose hips and berries and potatoes and horseradish root.

Besides the beauty, this annual blanket of fall leaves is as important to the ecosystem as elders are important to younger members of society.  The skirts below trees and bushes blanket them from cold and add biomass to the soil.  The leaves deter weeds.  From the trails that do not need the leaves, I rake piles to strew over my vegetable and flower gardens as mulch.  Over the winter, the leaves break down under the snow weight to lighten the soil the following year.   Voles and insects burrow beneath the leaves for protection from winter weather.  With so many benefits of autumn leaves, I don’t know why anyone rakes them into a garbage bag to be carted off.  They are valuable to every plant and critter in your yard.

Looking upward from the lake shore, I see termination dust (initial snow) coating the cap of the 4600 foot mountain west of our lake and draping the 5000 foot mountain range to our north.  Each 1000 feet of elevation is about 5 degrees cooler than below.  So after each rain or fog here, we watch the snowline creep downhill until it envelops us, too.  The natural world is our thermometer and barometer.  Mine is beautiful.

October 10 we awoke in the dark to the sound of hundreds of geese, swans and cranes vectoring south.  In the early morning light, we saw a flock of a hundred or more geese resting on our lake.  They huddled so close to one another that they looked like a bright white island. I don’t think my dog, who gets very excited about individual water fowl, could even interpret what that mass was.  The timing of their flight south was clear when the light lifted and we saw the first dusting of snow in our yard as well as deeper incursions on the mountain tops.  These huge migratory departures in fall and  arrivals in spring punctuate our year more decisively than any calendar date.

In this short and dramatic season, I know that some morning later this month, we will awaken to a black and white world.  Technicolor autumn will disappear for a year.  For others, this is their last season.  So, for me and for them, I savor every image of these last few days of evanescent beauty. 

In Nature, Nothing is Straight

 

When I fly into a city, what strikes me most are all the straight lines: long grids of streets and highways bisected at neat 90 degree angles, set with rectangular buildings, miles of telephone wires and railroad tracks.   This is especially striking in flat terrain, like Phoenix and Houston.  

Civil engineers can feel rightly proud of their profession.  They have transformed these landscapes into humanscapes, capable of providing transportation, communication, electricity, water, and housing for millions of people.

Alaska, of course, is not like that.  Our land is too rugged and our population small.  Our biggest city, Anchorage, has a straight grid of streets (numbered and lettered), but for only about 270,000 people before it runs out of room, between the mountains and the sea.  Because of both the land and the population outside this one municipality, we have only three numbered highways.  Many of our homes and communities are accessible only by marine highway (ferries) or, like mine, by small airplane. 

Personally, I think this is marvelous… 

Because there are no roads or electricity or other humanscape where I live (other than my own habitation structures), I am alert to the fact that in the biological and botanical world, NOTHING natural is straight.  Everything is curved, and for practical reasons. Curved surface areas of leaves and tree trunks receive and shed more sun and precipitation.  Mountains are shaped by ice, wind, and rain.  Circuitous streams and rivers and bogs capture and carry more water.  Nothing in human and animal bodies is straight either.  Think of the walnut curves in our brains, or the elliptical nature of our intestines, not to mention the vascular system.

To me (and I bet some psychology grad students have documented this), curves are more calming and attractive than straight lines. 

 

Speaking of psychology, we use terms like, “Life throws us a curve ball.” We never say that “Life throws us a line drive.” 

I wonder if physically and psychologically, we are more naturally, positively attuned to curves than the straight lines in benches, seating arrangements, buildings and roads. 

…    

When our float (or ski) plane rises above our lake in the Alaska bush, bearing my husband, dog, and me to anyplace else, I love looking down from 1200 feet to survey the natural landscape.  Because we have no pollution here, I can see much farther (from the ground or in the air) than in cities (even from our previous 17^th floor condo in a high-rise in Houston, TX.)   Here, I can see the Alaska Range, with Denali its pinnacle, about 200 miles north.   Whether summer green or winter white, every path of water, every beach, every stand of trees and plant life is sinuous.  Every mountain range, too.

As a result, my eye, like those of search and rescue spotters, is automatically drawn to those occasions of “what does not fit” in this view.  What stands out most is a straight line and something unnaturally shiny.  This is usually a bit of cabin roof line, flashing in the sun, or the gunnels of a metal boat or the long edge of a private plane’s wing in glossy yellow or white.

Aloft from our lake,  how long does it take before I see my first hint of human construction?  After ten minutes, I see a sliver of silver roof line. The roofs of these older cabins were creatively “shingled” with used fuel oil containers.  The shiny metal was cut, flattened, and nailed onto wooden roof planks or plywood.  Good repurposing.

In twelve minutes, we peer down at a river lined with cabins set five acres apart on a bluff.  Depending on the fish runs, we see 6 or 10 motor boats, but none today.  The braided river winds slowly south around sandbars and downed trees, carrying glacial silt from the Alaska Range to the Cook Inlet.  The name is Susitna.  In the Athabaskan language, the –na denotes a river and the –susit apparently refers to the glacial silt suspended in the river, turning it a milky color. 

Over the ensuing ten minutes, I see increasing indications of population:  asphalt roads, wooden telephone poles, cleared properties populated with vehicles and buildings in various states of use, repair, and functionality. 

We glide onto a lake adjacent to a major road and taxi to shore.  I open the gull wing passenger door, wait for my husband to stop the engine (which turns off the propeller), and drop down to the float, scoot under the diagonal struts, pick up the tow line, and jump to shore, less nimbly, I must admit, than a decade ago. 

After we secure the plane, we venture out to city errands in a vehicle we store there.  For the first time in many months, I open my wallet (often) for services, like a dentist or purchases we cannot grow, like citrus, coffee, and chocolate, and modern day conveniences that we cannot make, like hoses and gaskets and coaxial cable.  After not thinking about money for many months at home, it seems to me that in a city, that is foremost on my mind.

Even here in Alaska, with its gorgeous mountains, forests, and streams, my low view along the road is of really unattractive strip centers and parking lots.  My olfactory and auditory senses are assaulted by the sound and smell of vehicles on the road.  In a doctor’s waiting room or a restaurant, I feel awkward, almost embarrassed, by how close people are and how we can overhear conversations.  But people on the road do not seem to mind these noises and smells and lack of privacy.  They are used to the population density and its intrusions. 

My home is different.

Here, if I want to hear a human sound, I have to make it.  Only one other couple lives within many miles of us, and they tend to be quiet, too.

When I return home, and walk among the plants and woods of my property, along sinuous (of course) paths among berry bushes and spruce and birch trees, I notice that I breathe deeper than I do in a city.  Partly, this is because everything smells so good.  I inhale whichever berries or flowers are peaking, as well as the spruce, clover, and sweet grass.  And partly. this deep breathing is a sign of contentment and relaxation. 

When people are stressed out, we tend to breathe more shallowly. 

I acknowledge that some urbanites freak out in nature (we had a dear friend from Mumbai who had a panic attack out here the first day due to the silence and openness. It was totally unfamiliar.  No straight lines.  No cars and honking and crowds and the smells that emanate from all of them.  She had to fly back to the “big city” of Anchorage the next day and then to a city of many million people that felt  more comfortable to her.

Cities with infrastructure are impressive social and physical constructions where populations grow and develop culturally significant arts, technologies, and skills because large populations support specialization.  I enjoyed living in cities for decades and, because I no longer do, I respect all the hidden requirements that make them work (like sewage and water treatment and electricity, and traffic lights). 

But for more than a dozen years, I have chosen to listen to different sounds, see different lines, smell different scents.  These years living in the woods have changed me.  I have a deep sense of belonging here that was lacking in all those straight places, that lead... where?