Rambling of Autumn and Nostalgia

I am not sure what it is about the fall, but something about this particular time of year makes me super nostalgic. I have always been prone to nostalgia, reflecting with sweet melancholy on things that happened anywhere from 2.5 decades ago, to that which occurred just 2.5 months ago. Yet, there is something about that crisp, sharp smell of autumn, with the piercing bite of frost in the breeze, and the colors of trees set ablaze that speaks to my very core. And as I wax poetic about it all, the scientist in me always asks why.

I partially believe that it has something to do with the academic in me. Fall always signaled the start of a new academic year, and so in a sense, this has been programmed so deeply that it almost becomes hard wired. I have always seen Fall as more of a season of birth and hope and inspiration than that of death and hibernation. In elementary school, There was so much to look forward to, with Halloween and Thanksgiving...which of course were precursors to the holiday season. Everything was new, exciting, and filled one with the type of optimism that only a child could have. In middle and high school, there evolved this sense of something deeper and more substantial that came with the Fall: a recognition of the passage of time, that these days were limited and soon we would be expelled into the "real world". And so those autumns were almost celebrations of the expectations to come! There was always the promise of new friends, new adventures, new loves, new memories, and endless possibilities. Much of that carried through college too, but then began a connection with Fall and nostalgia. I had already come to miss how I had interwoven the season with the time and memories of high school. And so autumn became both inspirational, hopeful, but yet deeply melancholy.

And so autumn continues today to be my favorite season, as it is this soft but deafening clash of hope, beauty, and birth with the mourning for friends, loves, and memories long since past that have simply slipped away through the relentless passage of time. I suppose experience is what forges our relational sensory cues, and as one who continues in, and fully expects to continue on in an academic setting, autumn will always be a catalyst of nostalgia. But the part of me that wants to believe in more than science and rationalism hopes at some fundamental level, these feeling are not elicited by some programmed response to experience...but by the very connection of human to the natural world itself. Because amid the extended shadows caused by shortening daylight, the crackle of hardening leaves underfoot, the slow readjustment to the burden coat wearing, the aroma of yawning trees, and the sight of the crows taking to travel en mass....it is as if the very Earth itself is saying "hey notice me...and reflect upon yourself". Perhaps it is a mixture of both social conditioning and the essence of nature. But whatever the case is, autumn is always the most thrilling, and simultaneously most achingly yearning time to be alive.