The Quiet Invitation

After the verdant green of the summer and the burst of reds and oranges in early fall, the days of late autumn slip in with a quiet, calm grace. Something about this time of year feels self-assured, confident, present without flare. A golden hush collects in the dried grasses and still-clinging beech leaves. The bustle of activity within harvest and migration ceases. A rest descends on the land as the sun’s glow arcs low over the horizon and darkness claims the edges of each day.

It’s the time of year when the particular slant of light is caught by the white, tufted tops of the reed grasses, suddenly illuminated like so many candlesticks alongside the roadways. The deciduous trees extend black and wiry against the sky and the sky is clear and sharp in the chilled air. The tamarack trees burst into a final fury of flame.

I am wary of flare, attracted to the simple, the transparent, the core. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that I so love these late fall days. As I walk frost-tipped fields and quiet forests, I think: this is the soul of the world, visible when all the extra trappings and trim fall away, glowing golden, here but for a minute before it is covered in shimmering white flakes. I want to walk and walk and never stop, in this moment of soul-baring transparency. The world calls to me, asking me to notice the subtle: the white etchings along the water’s edge as ice forms, the dark twist of branches suddenly visible, the birds that remain, and the quiet always present at the edges. Every year, this golden time pulls me towards reflection, and I walk and notice: what sustains beyond the flare.

This fall, I have been learning to witness my breath. I walk through the woods and I notice: “I am breathing in. I am breathing out.” Most days, my in-breath takes about five steps and my out-breath about six. Around me, the woods grow quiet as winter approaches. Through it all, I am walking and breathing and noticing each breath.

It strikes me: this witnessing the breath is really witnessing my own aliveness.

With each passing year, I feel it more and more: the desire to slow time. I’d like to open each moment like a book and spend eons on the story contained on each page. 

As a child, I flitted about, seeking adventures, my wild imagination pouring out to meet the invitation extended by each moment. I chased dreams, experiences, all of it. 

These days, I watch my children in their own preoccupation with the whirling dance. Now it is they who pour themselves outward into the world to discover what happens in the encounter. 

Me, I want to gather the world and take it in. As I walk and notice - in-breath, out-breath, breeze catching and tossing the water’s surface, a line of movement exploding into being and then fading - I know the current that underlies this desire to open and extend every single moment. I can feel it under everything. It is the acknowledgment that all of this is temporary: the squirrel, the spruce tree, the late afternoon light blazing across the tops of the pines, my dog and his graying muzzle, my children’s soft cheeks, my in-breath and out-breath. 

I love it so much, this world to which I bear witness and this experience of being alive. It is bittersweet, the dance of deep love and the temporal nature of a life. The immensity of that paradox can break my heart open, I know, and yet I cannot help but keep it close by. Along with witnessing each breath, it is the best way I have found to know I am alive.