Times of Transition

Superb September days lately, sun soaked and trending less and less humid, with warm days and cool nights. Two nights from now the moon will be full, and one week from today we’ll observe the autumnal equinox. Such are these times of transition that each hour, each day, each week stands apart from the rest, approaches and then purrs poignantly past.

Once again, I’m “teeter tottering between… summer’s curtain call and autumn’s debut, between and betwixt scores of less-than-precisely delineated transitions.”

Returning from a picture perfect afternoon wake surfing with nephews and friends on Whallons Bay, we acknowledge seasonal lasts and second-to-lasts. Summer watersports are winding down. Not quite done, but almost. Soon we’ll catalogue last boat swims, slalom skis, and wake surf sessions. Tomorrow we’ll haul the Chris-Craft. Not long after that we’ll haul the Nautique.

And once both are winterized and snug in storage, I’ll count down the final outings in my rowing dory, dory sunups suspended until springtime. We’ll eat the last of the garden tomatoes and artichokes. Maybe press apples from our orchard into cider, sit by the crackling fire pit while watching the sunset, gaze up at the full moon while soaking in the hot tub.

I’ll savor final gravel bike rides while noting fall foliage forerunners, little by little, leaf by leaf yielding to these times of transition.

These outliers a vanguard inevitable and unstoppable. (Source: Fall Foliage Forerunner)

The nighttime trills of gray tree frogs will gradually fall silent, and the yellow garden spider weaving a zippered web beside Rosslyn’s front door will yield to onshore breezes and blowing leaves.

These times of transition are both beautiful and bittersweet, vividly lived and yet achingly ephemeral. Like seeds of seasonality, sown, germinating, and hastening toward harvest, toward hibernation, they begin to blur mesmerizingly. I strive to slow and savor the stanzas, to make memories that will endure, to live intentionally and indelibly, to feel fully even when the highs subside into moments of melancholy.