September is my favorite month, largely because it is a month of constant, minute changes. We may not see fall quite as obviously as we do in October, but we don’t need to. If we’re close to the earth, we know it’s there. Every day, a tiny change in the smell of the woods, a steady drop in nighttime temperatures. The crickets a little more insistent, the moon a little clearer, the dusk a little quicker.
September in New England takes all these sensations and magnifies them. It’s why thousands of people flock in reverse-migration up to the northeast corner of the country every year. It’s why I grew up using mildly derogatory terms like “leaf-peepers” and “flatlanders” to describe the out-of-state cars that crawl down Vermont’s dirt roads and clog traffic for the locals. It’s also why, despite the single digit temperatures that come not too long after, people stay and stay and stay.
Maybe it’s the loom of a long and frigid winter that makes autumn here better than everywhere else. Biologically, botanically, we know this to be true; a combination of warm days and almost-but-not-quite freezing nights will yield the most perfectly brilliant leaves, and in that regard, a Northeast fall gives and gives.
But what about sentimentally, psychologically? Isn’t it the knowledge of black ice and stick season that makes us drink in every bit of fall air a little more eagerly? Doesn’t our own awareness of impending freeze make the leaves just a little bit brighter than carotenoids and anthocyanin can do alone? What does it say about us that we need the prospect of darkness lurking just around the corner in order to fully appreciate the light?
I don’t have all the answers to that giant question right now, as I sit outside with my one small cup of coffee, but I do have this: I think that every year, September offers up a desperately-needed reminder that we’re more plant-like than we think we are. We, too, sense fall before it comes. We, too, respond by starting to feel the world in technicolor; autumn always brings heightened nostalgia, heightened longing.
I’m not going to write a thesis to convince you that we’re all just trees, but maybe there’s some good in thinking that way for a moment. After all, at a time when we’ve caused floods and fires to ravage the planet, we need nothing more than a wake-up call that urges us to recall our connection to the earth. Maybe this can be it.