Editor’s note: This op-ed is by award-winning journalist Telly Halkias. It first appeared in the Portland Daily Sun.
T.S. Eliot had it all wrong: April isn’t the cruelest month; that honor belongs to November. Beneath its Spartan exterior lurks a spirit only humans can fathom, which makes us yearn for better things ahead.
This phenomenon comes to light in my favorite time of year, what Peter Gilbert, a noted Robert Frost devotee and scholar, once dubbed as “stick season.”
Much like mud season is springtime’s attempt to break out of the womb, stick season is fall’s desperate stab at staying out of the grave.
Essentially a northern occurrence, I’ve always found comfort when leaf peepers, like so many migrating birds, flock back to points south. The raking is done, the grass mowed one final time, and the first overnight freeze sets in.
Then, with no hope of renewal and expiration all but inevitable, there is stillness.
In the silence of stick season the predominant color is gray, but not the ornamental hue of cadet uniforms on homecoming weekend against an emerald parade field. Rather, it is a gray that seems to suck the life out of every surrounding pigment, holding its breath long enough to exhale the blusters which herald winter’s onset.
There’s a melancholy in late autumn, after the leaves are gone but before the first major snowfall, exacerbated by the tease of flurries which cover the ground like a faded, moth-infested quilt.
On a recent stick season evening, these gusts met me as I drove home from running an errand.
The dreary, dimming light merged with bare tree limbs. A breeze swirled and shifted clumps of leaves about as if to welcome my arrival, rolling out a carpet of forgotten foliage onto the roadway in front of my bumper.
Entering the neighborhood, stick season yielded to an ink spot of bright red. A lone cardinal dressed the otherwise naked maple by my driveway, announcing his presence to the coming dusk.
Exiting the car, I started his way, but stumbled over a few loose twigs. Rather than kicking these to the side, I hustled them up and carried them to a familiar stack that had been building on my front porch for weeks. After all, every stick season disciple knows the value of good kindling for the colder weather ahead.
Turning back, he hadn’t left me. I sauntered over to the adolescent maple, the same tree I had planted on my front lawn a decade earlier. Surely he would fly away with my approach.
Instead, when I stopped on the dying grass about 10 feet from his branch, he let out the “cheer-cheer” so well known to his family, hopped up to the catbird seat, and serenaded me allegro. A twilight concert is rare enough, but this late in the fall it’s unheard of.
Perhaps because of such moments, stick season is my chosen time of year. The premature sunsets define us as individuals and communities, for it’s in shadows, not in light, that we drop our guard.
There’s a melancholy in late autumn, after the leaves are gone but before the first major snowfall, exacerbated by the tease of flurries which cover the ground like a faded, moth-infested quilt. It unnerves us with its mortality, yet reassures us that surviving the cold — not surrendering to it — will get us to spring.
My little friend the cardinal will hold his ground and not head south, as if defending a long-held vow. Destined to face the frost together, I left him on his perch and headed into the house, knowing later on he’d find my birdfeeders out back.
Soon, stick season will leave us both behind, yearning for rebirth. Yet he’ll plunge from my beloved gray blanket to winter’s white shroud. While the rest of us mourn, he’ll peck at the daily birdseed ration with abandon, flashing his wings against the frozen backdrop, a hopeful asterisk to death.
You may e-mail Telly Halkias at tchalkias@aol.com or follow on Twitter: @TellyHalkias
