Hello, Fall. It’s Nice to See You Again.

Dr. Bobi’s Thoughts on the Autumn Equinox, embracing the darkness, getting older, and why autumn isn’t failed summer.

Hello, Fall. It’s nice to see you again.

Am I fully ready to don my witch’s hat and embrace the season?

More so than ever.

After such a hot, humid summer that seemed to linger way too long, falling behind on yard work, and having entirely too many days where it was simply too damn hot to spend the afternoon canning tomatoes, I was absolutely thrilled by last week’s rain and cold days.

There is still SO much to do before winter. The yard is overgrown. The garden needs attention. There are things to harvest and preserve and clean up, and suddenly the time to do all of it feels very short.

But it finally feels like witch season.

I’m ready to walk through the woods while the leaves die around me, looking for mushrooms and all the forgotten treasures of summer now resting on the leaf-littered forest floor, soon to disappear again when the snow comes.

Have you noticed that even the sounds outside are changing?

The birds are different. The crickets are more prominent. The cicadas are reaching the end of their time. Night comes earlier. Birds and butterflies are beginning their migrations. The whole landscape sounds different than it did a month ago.

The season shifts, and the wheel turns once more.

We Can’t Stay in Summer Forever

What makes me laugh is that I remember standing outside at the very beginning of spring, before the grass was even green or tall enough to need it, thinking about how much I missed mowing.

I was craving mowing the yard.

Which is hilarious now.

Because currently I haven’t had time to mow. Everything is overgrown. I’m behind on yard work, and I definitely did not keep up with everything this summer as well as I imagined I would back when the whole growing season was stretched out in front of me.

It’s funny how quickly our feelings change with each passing season.

Spring arrives and I want everything to GROW. I want seeds and dirt under my fingernails and absurd numbers of plants. Summer comes and suddenly everything needs watered, weeded, harvested, mowed, pruned or preserved, usually at the exact same time. Then September rolls around and I start looking longingly at my sweaters while quietly begging the tomatoes to please stop.

And yet every spring, I will want it all again.

That is the deal.

Nothing stays in one season forever.

And lately I’ve been thinking about how strange it is that we understand this perfectly well when we're talking about the natural world, but seem to forget it completely when we're talking about ourselves.

Because autumn isn’t failed summer.

A tree turning red in October isn’t desperately trying to figure out how to become green again. A sunflower going to seed hasn’t failed because its petals are gone. The garden becoming tangled, heavy and a little wild around the edges isn’t evidence that something went wrong.

It’s doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

So why are we so terrified when we begin to change, too?

Apparently Autumn Is Wonderful Until It Happens to Us

We LOVE fall.

We wait all year for pumpkin spice season. We decorate our houses with dried leaves and dead flowers. We take family pictures surrounded by trees literally preparing to drop everything they grew that year.

We pay money to drive somewhere pretty and stare at leaves because they are dying in particularly spectacular colors.

Then we find a gray hair on our own head and go, ABSOLUTELY NOT. THIS MUST BE STOPPED IMMEDIATELY.

Which brings me to Belinda.

Belinda is a white eyebrow hair.

She appeared one day, in all of her wiry little glory, sticking out of my eyebrow like she had been personally appointed to announce my transition into Bog Witchhood.

Obviously I named her.

Belinda the Bog Witch.

And listen, I have gray hairs. I’ve had some for a while. And wrinkles I attribute to med school. I’m not pretending I sprang forth yesterday as a dewy woodland maiden untouched by time. But there was something about this one white eyebrow hair.

And instead of being horrified by her, I found myself kind of delighted.

Because I'm getting older.

I want to get older.

That is, after all, the goal.

That doesn’t mean I think anyone needs to stop dyeing their hair, throw away their skincare, cancel their Botox appointment or suddenly decide they love every single thing their changing body does. You are allowed to decorate the house for autumn however you damn well please.

I just wonder why we’ve been taught to treat the season itself as something shameful.

Especially for women.

We’re encouraged to bloom, but not wilt. Mature, but somehow not look older. Gain wisdom and experience while maintaining the face and body we had before we acquired any of it. To Stay in summer. Forever.

But we can't, and we aren't supposed to.

There are things I understand about myself now that I couldn’t have understood ten years ago. There are things I care much less about. Things I’m finally comfortable saying no to. Things I’m still figuring out. Things my body can teach me now precisely because it is not the same body I had at twenty.

I don't think that's failed summer.

I think that's me coming into my autumn.

And I really like autumn.

The Darkness Is Coming

Last week, all that rain forced me into something I probably wouldn’t have chosen for myself.

It was too wet to garden. Too wet to mow. There weren’t quite enough tomatoes ready for another batch of sauce. The rain meant shorter walks for the dogs.

Suddenly, I was just…home.

Quiet.

And my brain immediately started wandering toward all the other things I could work on. Projects I’ve been thinking about. Things I want to make. Things I want to finish.

And I realized: this is what winter always brings me.

The outside world gets quieter and smaller, and all of that energy I’ve spent tending gardens and yards and plants and outdoor projects begins turning inward again.

We aren’t quite there yet.

Autumn is the threshold.

There is still harvesting to do. There are still tomatoes on the vines and things growing in the garden. There are still projects to finish and things to prepare before everything goes dormant.

This September, I've been thinking a lot about completion. Not throwing everything away. Not immediately rushing into the next thing. Just looking around at what has grown this year and asking what needs to be finished before I move into the next season.

Maybe that's part of what autumn offers us.

Spring asks, What do you want to grow?

Summer asks, What are you willing to tend?

And autumn asks, What has ripened?

What is ready to be harvested? What deserves to be celebrated? What needs another few weeks? What never became what you thought it would? What can finally be called complete?

Eventually winter will ask us to rest.

But we're not there yet.

The Wheel Turns Once More

Today is the Autumn Equinox. For this brief moment, light and darkness stand nearly equal, and from here we begin our descent into the darker half of the year.

That sentence probably isn't supposed to sound exciting.

But to me, it does.

Bring on the darkness.

Bring on cold mornings and dying leaves. Bring on mushrooms and sweaters and soup simmering on the stove. Bring on the smell of fallen leaves and the strange little treasures hiding beneath them. Bring on earlier nights and projects spread across the kitchen table.

Let the garden go to seed.

Let the trees change.

Let Belinda continue her reign over my right eyebrow.

Nothing is supposed to bloom forever.

There is beauty in the ripening. Beauty in the finishing. Beauty in becoming a little wilder around the edges. Beauty in entering a different season than the one we occupied before.

Autumn isn't failed summer.

And maybe neither are we.

The wheel turns once more.

Hello, Fall.

It really is good to have you back. 🍄🍂🌙