A New Autumn

“And summer’s lease hath all too short a date...”

In my head, autumn has already begun. 

I know that might be an annoying thing to say. Summer holidays have weeks to go yet and, if you’re in school in England, your holiday has practically only just begun. 

Conventional wisdom would also say that the 1^st of September is as good a time as any to resume calling the world ‘Autumnal’ and, for most of my life, I would have agreed with that. When we were small, autumn started on the night ‘The High Chaparral’ was on the telly and we were sitting on the floor, trying to sellotape wallpaper covers onto our new school books. School was starting again the next day and another supposedly endless summer was sudddenly at an end.

But, as I’ve clocked up a few years, I now tend to think that autumn arrives as soon as the very first signs of it peep through. A leaf or two on the trees turn golden and brittle, the daylight slips a little sooner out of the evening sky. Signs like these speak clearly to me that autumn is now here and, even though it’s only the 10^th of August, summer’s lease has once again prematurely expired.

It’s an age thing, I think. To find Autumn present so very early in the year. But it’s an Irish thing too. The season is historically caled 'Lughnasa' and it’s that time when harvesting begins. (I’m a townie, I don’t know actually much about harvesting). And, like I said, the natural signs are there too. The first of the blackberries on the thorny bushes on my back garden have ripened and are now dark and luscious. “Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it.”

I like Autumn. For me, it’s a time for getting things done. Nothing is in the way. No Christmas edge, no summer doldrums. Let’s get it work. But I tend to mourn the passing of summer a little bit too. I’m always left with the feeling that I never even came close to celebrating it enough. I have worked all the way through, as I always do. I have let it sidle past. 

But another part of me knows that I haven’t really done that. For every day of thsi summer, I have taken a moment and looked around me and acknowledged the full trees, the endless evenings, the kids on the green doing their holiday hurling classes. I may not have rolled around and covered myself in summer, but I have always known it was there. It that sense, I haven’t missed it at all.

One other slightly sad note. I had written somewhere before about how a Chestnut tree that sits across the river from my childhood home was always the first to turn golden at the end of the summer. If I went to Sligo now and looked across the Garavogue, I’m sure that same tree would have the new season written all over it. Every year I noted it. When I moved here to Castlebar, I found a new ‘Early Tree’ right there on The Mall. Another Horse Chestnut. Most years, I would sit on one of the benches in the town green and just note for a moment that the tree had turned and autumn was here once again. This year, the tree is gone. I wrote about the cutting down of a few trees last Christmas, for safety reasons, and, silly me, I never realised that my tree was one of them. I guess I’ll have to find another tree to stare at.

As an antidote to all this morosity, I went for a walk yesterday just after writing the bulk of this thing and found large residues of summer to be still in the air. I guess it’s just one of those times of the year when everything is on the turn. One day one thing, the next day another. Best not to sweat it too much. As my old pal Rod McKuen sang, “And to each season, something is special…”

And anyway, you mustn't pay too much heed to me. I'm a law unto myself. I hope that your own personal summer runs right on up to the middle of September. The weather is usually at its loveliest then anyway. Summer isn’t over yet, for most of us, not even close. As for me, I’ll be just fine, down here in my own new Autumn.

Summer will come again.

With a little luck and with a fair wind.