Episode 23: Gordon Lightfoot and the Golden Autumn World Just Outside My Grasp
The fall never fails to slip away from me.
Like pulling water from a stream with bare hands, the autumn only slides between my fingers. The season comes on fast and bids farewell before I’ve quenched my thirst. Summer for me is something like mental dehydration, a psychological leech, and when the end rolls around, it’s good riddance; the lawns are dead, the romance is dead, cue Don Henley and “The Boys of Summer.” But the wooden guitar strum of fall could linger forever, and with it, a brown-leather-jacket-clad Gordon Lightfoot state of mind. Yet even at the first waft of autumnal death in late-August, I find myself lamenting the loss of my favorite season, knowing it will flee before I can catch it and put it in a jar, not unlike a child grasping at fireflies just outside his shortsleeved Fourth of July reach. Sundown, you better take care.
It’s been a strange fall in Northeast Ohio. Summer overstayed its welcome, the trees were late to turn, then it finally cooled down and started raining. I’ve barely been here for it; two trips to Boise in September, 20 days in total, then I dropped back down in Hudson in time to greet October, eager for a pause and the autumn sweaters and backyard bonfires that have yet to grace my skin. Suddenly it’s November, and like a light switch, the Midwest has flipped from sunny and warm to cold and steely. Winter is on the way. You can feel it in the air, smell it in the woodsmoke, see it in the sky. You can sense it all around you in the slight, gradual shift away from the sun. The crickets are in the last movement of their symphony. They sound tired, fewer in numbers. Soon they’ll be gone, as will the golden leaves still clutching to the wet branches. The ground will harden, the turnpike din will cut through the bare trees, everything will feel concrete and gray as we string Christmas lights to cover up the new cold monochrome world.
My mind lives in a perpetual state of fall – a mental harvest, always taking stock – and it’s been on overdrive the past 15 months since we left Boise. But a few days ago, I paused, stepped back and took in my surroundings, inhaling it all, and I realized that I finally felt settled in; my wife, Erica, had said it would take a year to feel this way and here we are. For as much as I think (and overthink), lately I haven’t had much time to think – not like this, at least – and to stumble upon this revelation amid the swirling headspace of my new work rhythm was unimaginably comforting. The pandemic, the move, the record store … none of it feels real, and it’s possible it never will, but perhaps my gradual acceptance of the absurd has looped me back around to feeling something like normal.
At this time last year, as we spent the fall unpacking boxes and putting our lives back in place, I envisioned a much different day-to-day in our new environs. I thought I would sit outside more. Take more walks. Chop more wood. Modern life has pulled us away from the natural world. That notion is nothing new, but even here in my roving home office in the leafy green nowhere, with the ability to move at will, to step outside, put my feet to the earth and smell the pine-scented air around me, most days I stay put in front of the screen, only to look up and realize several hours have drifted by with little more than my hands moving over a keyboard or phone. Most days that’s a good thing – I’m driven by passion to succeed with what I love, whether it’s my relationships or my work, and I’m invested in both now more than ever – but it’s even better to get up and walk around a bit.
Last Tuesday, I did just that. With the fading fall at the forefront of my mind, I forced myself up and out of the house for a drizzly afternoon walk around the block, Gord’s Gold playing gently inside my head. I moved deliberately, savoring every step and every breath, as I strolled past fragrant piles of red and yellow leaves and stately houses dressed in orange and black for the suburban Halloween weekend. I’m always looking for a feeling – a wordless, intangible feeling, a deep existential resonance that cuts through the day-to-day, that cuts through the madness and the mundane – and I often find it in music and, particularly in the fall, the outdoors. In periods of overdrive, which often, unfortunately, coincide with autumn, I resort to snapshots: an eyes-closed evening decompression with a favorite record, or a family walk in the woods as a light wind waltzes with the vibrant dying leaves. These moments are nourishing, warm scraps to fuel me in the depths of dark seasons, and the trick is remembering how easy they are to grasp — and more importantly, to stop and take hold of them.
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