Fall: a time of reflection

The best time of the year is just around the corner…changing leaves, brisk breezes, apple picking, hard cider, nights filled with bonfires, and it’s the time of the year where I can wear my favorite wardrobe (my closet overflows with scarves and boots awaiting this time). This is the time of the year that my husband and I take the long drive Up North to bask in the change of colors and the fresh lake air that rolls off the waves. My husband picks up his bow and embarks, with the light of dawn, into the woods to steadily stalk the deer.

The fall is the time of year where things begin to slow down and become prepared for the bitter fingers of winter. I used to look as this time as a time of dying. All the green was fading and falling, the sun was setting earlier, and the dark lasted longer, and right after this came the bitter cold of a Michigan winter.  

I would crave the blooming of flowers and the long lasting kiss of the sun on my skin once September hit. Yet, what I didn’t realize about the end of the year is that all the beautiful things in nature around me must slow down and just stop for a period of time so that they are refreshed afterwards. Not only must nature do it, but we humans should take a page out of their book and do the same thing. In the crazed go go go world we live in, where do we have a moment to just stop and let our souls and body become refreshed again. 

Fall isn’t only for the orchards, the cider, the bonfires, or the best wardrobe…its for the time to just stop, take a breath, reflect, and rest for the upcoming time of life. 

As this time of the year rolls around again I prepare myself for a restful period so that at the end of the cool fall and bitter winter I am refreshed and have become anew again.