Today was the first hike I’ve taken in six days.
I had a very busy stretch working a multi-day wedding with long hours, and when I’m working an event like that, there’s absolutely no time and no way I could physically handle the addition of more steps to my days! But today, I was very excited to wander up the hill to my favorite rock so I could have some time alone with my thoughts. My soul gets depleted if I go too long without indulging myself in this totally necessary space I find with God.
But the last hike I took before I got so busy was memorably beautiful because it’s harvest in the Wine Country, and all of the vines I’ve been watching over from my favorite perch were absolutely bursting with fruit. I love noticing how the angles of the vines seem to bend and slump before my very eyes as the clusters of grapes ripen into these juicy spheres that pull the vines lower to the ground. I knew their time on the vines was coming to an end, but when I walked by my first row of vines this morning, I stopped dead in my tracks.
The grapes were gone.
A stillness hovered over the stretch of vineyards to my right and to my left, and when I gazed up the hill I was getting ready to climb, I noticed how tall the vines seemed today as they swayed a bit in the cool Autumn breeze. It felt like so much happened while I was away — so many changes went down in the blink of an eye, yet the feeling in the air felt right to me, I suppose.
I’ve experienced some of the most profound versions of loss and acceptance in my life when a cool Fall breeze is grazing over my skin, and there’s a “knowingness” that strikes me every year around this time. And that feeling always slows me down and causes me to think. I guess you could say that Fall creates such a sense of melancholy closure in my being.
One season always ends as another one begins, but no other transition of seasons hits me quite like the transition into Autumn.
One of my very dear friends lost her father on the first day of Fall this year — September 23 — and when I got the text about his passing, I thought about how poignant that is. My own mom died on a very crisp Fall day in October, and maybe the feelings I felt for my friend as she begins the process of accepting the loss of her father mixed in with my own feelings about my mom. So I felt her sadness and the weight of her loss in my bones…
Fall seems to usher in the endings in life with a beautiful kind of dignity for me. The moody and dramatic hues of leaves dying on the vine are quite stunning, and sometimes, that kind of beauty hurts my eyes because it’s so spectacular. But what a glorious vision to ponder when you’re learning to let go…The cycles of life are so much more pronounced when you can see them showing up in nature the way I can on one of my hikes.
But for me, this reality on the vines felt very abrupt…and awfully sudden. I mean, I was only away for a few days, yet everything changed on me and without my permission — which only reminded me of how little control we really have in our lives. If it were up to me, I might be tempted to hang on to that bountiful moment just before Summer lets go and breaks into Fall because I still want the carefree spirit of Summer to linger, even though I know that feeling can’t last forever.
We don’t get to decide when to let go of the seasons — they do that for us. And, there’s mercy in that, I suppose. Perhaps we lack the wisdom or the courage to organize the flow of time the way God does inside of nature, yet when the moment of closure is actually upon us, we might discover the will to dig a bit deeper within to uncover an element of grace lingering in the mix of things, too.
Letting go only feels frightening to me when I think about it because it’s always so difficult for me to control my imaginations about what’s next. If I could just know what’s yet to come, versus trust that it’s all in the perfect order, I guess I’d be less worried or nervous about the unknown that will appear in the newest season of my life. But today, as I wandered among the naked vines, all I could feel was relief mixed with hope stirring in the sound of the leaves. One harvest of life lets go so another harvest can begin, and even in death, there’s an element of life because the cycle of seasons rolls on…
