walk : a last homage to autumn 2012

Hello sweet friends! Today is a blustery, windy, perfectly delicious chilly day, and I'm busy preparing for the very busy week ahead. While we just had our first snow, we're stuck in a limbo between seasons -- not quite fall, not quite winter. It's bitingly cold, the sky is mostly bluish grey, and the trees are bare, but I can smell winter in the air and it's wonderful. Since we're bidding fall goodbye for real, here's a little piece I wrote a few weeks ago about autumn. Enjoy, and happy Monday! :)


In the fall, when the leaves are multi-hued in shades of rich amber and heady burgundy and deep mahogany, pull on a sweater that looks like something you'd see on seinfeld and go for a walk. Don't stop to instagram a photo, don't pause a moment to tweet the very action of walking, simply go out and walk. Walk out of the neighborhood and leave the pavement stones of the concrete behind you and journey into the crackly yellow grass of fields burnished with auburn. Step into the pathway of the world as it was meant to be, under trees lazily letting go of their leaves one, by, one.

Pull on your hiking boots and lace them up tight, and grab a knapsack that has been sitting on your shelf since last fall. Put a water bottle in it and a journal with your favorite pen and an old film camera or a dslr or a point and shoot -- anything. Take dried fruits and nuts and an apple from the trees in your backyard, and go. Wrap a scarf around your neck and pull your hair into a messy bun and walk. Tuck in your favorite novel with the pages falling out and the words underlined and scribbles in the margins in the side pocket of the knapsack and read it in pathways that are almost worn, trails made by people in nature that are almost forgotten, but not quite.

Walk out of the suburbs, walk into the surrounding fields and countryside and trespass onto that one farmer's field with the plethora of pumpkins in the front of his farm. Walk past the buildings and away from the people and walk into nature. Traipse along the roads that lead out of neighborhoods and walk into the shadow of trees grown tall and proud. Breathe it in -- all of it -- the smell of the sky and the smell of the land and the feeling of the earth under your feet. Breathe in the leaves swirling round and round with gusts of wind that chap your face delightfully, causing flushed pink cheeks and sparkly eyes. Breathe in the sky, the blueness of it, the wideness of it, the hugeness of it, and remember that you are alive and it's a beautiful thing.

Bring a friend and walk. Walk left, walk right, walk north, walk south, walk walk walk. Go into the fields and have a picnic of dried fruits and nuts and the apples you packed. Make up silly poetry on the spot and dare each other to race across the field. Sit on pumpkins and jump off hay bales and enjoy the season. Leave a trail of words in the style of songs you wish you could sing and the trailing smoke of extinguished bonfires, their crackling embers scattering across the ground like a goodbye.

Walk into the fields and walk in the world.

Don't stop to think, just walk.