“Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter. In the bare trees and twigs what a display of muscle.”

(Henry David Thoreau, 1858)

Every few moments a leaf yields, loses grip on branch or twig, and flutters lightly to the ground, bedded amongst its own, a mottled carpet of red, yellow, and orange. Some pile on the rooftop, clutter the gutter; others gather by the fence; still others hold fast, quivering in the slight breeze, reluctant to accede. Looking up, a buck with a full set of antlers races across the wooded area behind me, in pursuit or pursued. And just now, the sun pops up above the trees, a skylight, glaring tremulously through the canopy.

I like a late autumnal, unkempt lawn, one strewn in leaves, kaleidoscopic, and darkening, slowly: castoffs, muscled off in tough love. Trees are trimming down, losing the weaker members, as the cold creeps up their branches. Some leaves are pocked by holes where insects have feasted; others, diseased; and still others, torn and worn by too many hot or windy, rain-beaten days. Where the leaf stem meets twig or branch there is a layer of cells called the abscission layer. As autumn days shorten, they begin to close, choking off the supply of water to the leaves and food into the tree. They must give way. The tree must steel itself for winter.

The day has warmed, Summer underneath Fall, and so I unlatch and slide open the window. What I hear is the juxtaposition of humanity and nature: the constant drone of a leaf blower mixed with the calls of a crow; the rattling of a workman’s ladder overlaying the pecking of a bird at seed; the drone of traffic undergirded by the gentler, more ancient wave of the winds.

I push back my chair, stand, and walk downstairs. I open the door to the backyard, and step out, walking back along the fence line, leaves crunching underfoot, the slanted rays of sunlight still warm. At the back fence, I turn and face our home, a fragile scaffold against the world, an aging but muscled display against winter’s coming, still standing, still home, a slight repository of Eternity.