the new year
"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
On my Sunday afternoon bike ride down a long flat country road, the tall trees that leaned in, towering over the telephone poles, blushed with hints of red and gold.
"The first intimations of Autumn," I said. Then, impressed with myself, I said it again.
The chill is back in the air, bringing that mysterious excitement which comes at the two changes of the year. The slow return of early woodstove fires marks the slow end of morning coffee on the dock. A sullen admittance that Summer is waning thin.
A change of season is upon us.
It's easy to bemoan the end of Summer, but I wouldn't want another four months. Life would begin to feel too airy and weightless, like it could just float and drift away. Besides, as a general rule, I refuse to indulge in any pessimism, especially over things I cannot change. Pessimism appeals to my weaker side; it's undoubtedly easier. And far more slippery.
Whereas the devout optimist lives by a desperate and immense effort to defend the honor of the world and persuade everyone how good Being is—that existence is better than extinction1. They don't maintain an invincible happiness, exactly, but they stubbornly and steadfastly maintain a wish and readiness to be happy. They ponder what happiness asks of them. And answer through action2.
Maybe because I'm in Ontario again that Fall feels especially romantic. There's an inexplicable attachment between this time of year and home. A certain settling down and settling in. When coziness, the sense of intimacy within a space, regains its proper and civilized reverence.
Every Fall, I remember how much I like the coming cold and coming home, and whisking homemade hot chocolate over the stove. And thick socks, and thicker blankets, and finding my favorite fleece that I forgot I ever owned. And dawn's blue and gritty light, and cool nights illuminated by the quiet glow of haloed houses humming out into the darkness. And brisk walks gazing at the lipstick red leaves and rolling fields of gold, and the sensation of warmth flooding in after being out in the cold. And gazing up at the night sky—a riot of crisp and glimmering stars.
It's like the slight cooling of the air reminds me of all that is good and precious in this world. Stirred curiously together with this wistful longing that swells inside from the contemplation of great beauty and great loss. In Autumn, I slip into a sense of wonder from which I never hope to recover.
This shift from August to September has always felt more like the beginning of a new year than whatever backward buffoonery people celebrate on December 31st3.
With September comes a shock of sanity. We're collectively roused from our sun-drunken delirium and brought back to diligence and duty. However Summer went, delightful or disastrous, a whispered promise is carried on the willowy wind of Fall. To simply begin again. Start fresh.
To live by the seasons is to dwell poetically.
And I’m convinced that the poet's favorite season is Fall because holding on comes so naturally. Birth is so joyous. What we must struggle and strive to learn is when to let go. Nothing is more true than transience. All great stories are, in the end, about death.
With the change in season, as life begins to dry and dwindle, preparing for a colorful and grand finale, I'm led to contemplate what needs to die in my life. What I need to let go of, to make room for something beautiful and new.
Last month in Newfoundland, I was listening to an ecologist—as we walked through the woods on a winding sun-strewn trail, shafts of soft warm light cast down through the branches—compare the Costa Rican jungle to the Boreal forest that stretches across Canada.
Close to the equator, the jungle never gets cold. Since the jungle never gets cold, nothing dies. And since nothing dies, everything is in a perpetual state of moist decay.
Whereas in the North, you get this incredible freshness, this aromatic aliveness every Summer. Precisely because everything dies each year, and is reborn anew4.
Death is the secret to life. All living things know this.
Adieu,
If you enjoyed this piece and want to get closer to me and my work, the best way is by becoming a patron of this newsletter. Next week, I’ll share a special, updated edition of one of my best essays from the archives.
And thank you to everyone who has been generous enough to buy me a coffee. Each cup of coffee is sacred.
👋 what i’ve been up to:
My first full week back at home, I've been returning to routine. Most of my time has been spent reading, running, trying new recipes, searching for the perfect cup of coffee, and building a woodshed (working title: the log lodge) to store firewood this winter.
Following advice from an artist friend, I started sketching designs for different houses, iterating toward a vision of the home I want to build. In many ways this year I've returned to the things I did as a child. One of them: writing little notes, drawing little designs, recording little ideas for later use.
✍️ quote i’m pondering:
“He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary.
'It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.'”
― J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)
📸 photos i took:
August in Ontario.
No one will admit this outright. But many modern philosophies I’ve heard peddled are only a hop, skip, and jump away.
One of my favorite parts of the Old Testament is God’s affirmation of the goodness of Being in the creation story. God looks upon creation, everything He has made, and says “it was good,” seven times.
Something is better than nothing. The nihilists have forgotten this.
G.K. Chesterton: “When I was a boy there were two curious men… the optimist and the pessimist… the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.”
One thing I’d add: Optimists have hope, not because they are good, but because they can be better.
Many of my thoughts on optimism and pessimism here have been influenced by reading Chesterton.
Personally, I still haven't figured out exactly what they're celebrating. The festive cheer from the holidays is over, the decorations come down, the days only grow colder and, regardless of the earnestness of one's resolution, beginning hungover in bed is nothing other than starting on the left foot. It seems to me more like an excuse for expensive, peer-pressured belligerence, exploited by capitalism and eaten up by consumerism—much like Halloween and Valentines. These absolute adult absurdities mark my three least favorite holidays, that I blissfully and boyishly boycott.
The only New Years tradition I personally support comes from the ancient Mesopotamians. Every New Year, the King would be brought outside the walls of his city, plain in appearance, stripped of his royal robes, and forced by the priests to explain, to confess, all the ways he had not been a good King that year.
A similar tale: In the parable of the trapeze, told to me by a Parish priest whose hair had grown silver but eyes had grown young, the gymnast can only grasp the next bar by letting go of the one they're currently holding onto.
“Death is the secret to life. All living things know this.” The ultimate optimist challenge!! Confronting death and by doing so embracing life. Come come, sweet Death, so that I may feel alive.
Another great essay. I love the image of a lip stick stained leaf. Autumn is my favorite time of year. I love the crisp air and colorful leaves. I never understood New Years celebrations. I always thought the new year should be celebrated on the first day of spring.