Autumn

bracken ferns

Autumn can be a melancholy time of year.  As I begin typing this post on a Tuesday morning, it's dreary and pouring down rain outside.  Summer is over and life seems to be slowly dying.

When I was a kid I didn't like school and so fall made me sad.  If summer meant freedom, fall meant the return to the dull routine of school.

chrysanthemums

Yet, for all that autumn has its rewards.  Nature puts on a final, dazzling display of colored leaves before the dark and bare days of November.  It's also the time of ripened apples and nuts and here in Poland it's the time for finding mushrooms in the forest.

I took the first 5 photos on this post.  The mums are in our garden and the other shots are from the forest nearby.

For sports fans fall brings the excitement of pennant races, playoffs and the World Series in baseball.  (There's also that twinge of sadness for teams simply playing out the schedule with no chance at post-season play.)  It's also the beginning of the football season.  For me, one of the most beautiful and thrilling sights is the Green Bay Packers wearing those green and gold uniforms on a sunny Lambeau Field on an autumn Sunday afternoon.

The picture below is scanned from my book, The Packer Legend: An Inside Look by John B. Torinus.  The caption doesn't mention it but I think that's Forest Gregg, number 75, on the turf in the background.  He was a great player and later coached the Packers in the mid-80s.  This book was given to me for Christmas in 1985 by my parents.  I've managed to hold on to this book all these years.  This fall I'm re-reading it for the umpteenth time.

 

 

 

I love the Peanuts comic strips and TV specials and autumn often reminds me of them.  Maybe it's because two of the three best Charlie Brown TV specials are fall-themed.  Those of course would be It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (with the other one of the three best being A Charlie Brown Christmas.)  Who doesn't think of Lucy van Pelt holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick, then snatching it away at the last moment, when they think of autumn?

In Autumn when the woods are red
by Robert Louis Stevenson

In Autumn when the woods are red
And skies are grey and clear,
The sportsmen seek the wild fowls' bed
Or follow down the deer;
And Cupid hunts by haugh and head,
By riverside and mere,
I walk, not seeing where I tread
And keep my heart with fear,
Sir, have an eye, on where you tread,
And keep your heart with fear,
For something lingers here;
A touch of April not yet dead,
In Autumn when the woods are red
And skies are grey and clear.


Consummation
by Randall Peaslee

Fall's fires softly glow,
     Burning bush and tree;
Bedraggled ships go sailing slow
     Across a concave sea.
Liquid air will flush and tear
     Flickering flames aloft,
Until the color-fevered year
     Extinguishes itself.