Autumn Fires

Lukas, Rhys & Leilani Schoonmaker - October Joy!! (Dover-Foxcroft Farm, Charlottesville, Va.)

I never feel so at home as I do in the Fall.  I love the outdoors, but never quite so much until I must wince just a bit at the cold bite of the wind.  Sweaters, hoodies, boots, and long sleeves–these are my best friends.  Some love the air to wrap them like a blanket.  I love to wrap a blanket against the air.  There is something about Autumn that is vibrant, fiery, and robust… yet something, too, that is mysterious, haunting, and still.  The best of both worlds.  Autumn awakes something in me that no other season does.  Autumn calls me back to home, back to hearth, back to pen, back to thought, back to all that matters.

Daddy & Lani Exploring the Farm (Oct 2009)

There is no greater joy than to crack open a sealed bedside window in Autumn, feel the brisk wind blow in off the red leaves, almost hear the crackle of the stars as they peek out from the midnight sky, spread over the mountain peaks.  Now I can sleep.  Now I can wake!

Robert Louis Stevenson, that Scottish author of Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and other great works, was born into a family of lighthouse designers, with a father who was a lighthouse engineer.  Stevenson reflected on Fall in his poem, Autumn Fires:

In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The gray smoke towers.

Lewis & Clark Brave the Pine Tunnels (October @ Dover-Foxcroft Farm)

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!

I could spend my whole life in October, November, and December.  Baby Emma, it will be marvelous to welcome you into the grandest season of them all!

~ by Adrian Schoonmaker on October 19, 2009.