I woke this morning to the first hard freeze of the season. Even though we have had a few snow showers already, it was too warm for it to stick around. This morning, however, the grass had that freezer-burn look, and the rooftops shone with white crystals that glittered in the sun. The temperature said 25 with a wind chill of 23. This comes on the heels of a nasty rain and windstorm that hit us the other day, stripping the more fragile trees bare of the few beautiful leaves it had left. My favorite tree, the one with the golden leaves that I can see from the window when I sit on the love seat to read, was particularly hard hit. One minute it was glorious against the sky, the next it was bare and looking lonely. However, maybe it's all in how you look at it.
I always like to think of the beauty of autumn as Mother Nature's last hurrah before everything goes gray and dark for the winter. It takes a certain amount of courage and belief in one's self to go out in a blaze of glory. Sure, spring can be spectacular in its own right, and summer is no slouch, either, but autumn pulls out all the stops. The reds are deeper. The oranges are bolder. The yellows are brighter, and the sun spotlights all of creation like a beauty queen on a pageant stage. If you have to let it all go, I say do it with gusto and glory!
I like to think that when it's time for us to move on to the next chapter in our lives, we can take a page from Mother Nature's playbook and go out in style. "Do not go quietly into that good night," as the poet said. I don't know about you, but when it's time for me to move on, I plan to go out in living technicolor and surround sound!
And so it is.
