The Return: Fall's Sacred Turning

Fall - Week 39 - On Reconnection and Release

In Her Nature is a year long exploration into the healing power of the natural world. Season by season, setting out to awaken the spirit, and rekindle joy. The weekly journal of a neighborhood, its plants and birds and creatures — and how they are helping repair a heart and rebirth a soul.

There is a moment each year when the earth exhales, releasing the held breath of summer’s intensity into something deeper, more contemplative. It arrives not with fanfare but with subtlety. A coolness in the morning air that carries scents you’d forgotten, and a quality of light that seems to remember things the blazing summer sun had burned away. This year, it came precisely with the equinox, as if nature herself were keeping promises made to the turning earth.

I felt it first in that predawn drive, when mist hung over the hay fields like dreams made visible. The cows stood as dark shapes in that ethereal gray, nearly ghosts themselves, while somewhere beyond the veil the sun prepared its daily resurrection. When it finally broke through, the light wasn’t summer’s harsh insistence but something gentler - honey-colored, forgiving, painting the world in watercolors rather than oils. There’s a quality to autumn light that makes philosophers of us all, as if the angle of the sun somehow tilts our perspective toward deeper truths.

But it was the elk that truly announced fall’s arrival, appearing like ancient messengers returning from some far country. Thirty strong, they materialized near my barn again where the horses graze, as if they’d always been there, as if summer had been merely an intermission in their eternal presence. The sight stopped my breath. These magnificent creatures who carry wilderness in their very bearing, who remind us that we share this land with beings far more attuned to its rhythms than we.

Days later, their bull crossed my path with the nonchalance of royalty. Through the seven-foot corn, that golden maze still waiting for harvest, he moved like a living embodiment of autumn’s power. His antlers, impossibly massive, caught the light like branching cathedrals. How does he carry such weight? Not just the physical burden of that crown, but the deeper weight of leadership, of protection, of responsibility to his herd. There’s something profound in watching him bugle toward his family, that primal call echoing across fields that have heard such sounds for millennia. He carries forward something ancient, something that connects this moment to every autumn that has ever been.

The robin, too, has returned, though where these red-breasted wanderers disappear during Colorado’s blazing summers remains one of nature’s quiet mysteries. Do they retreat to higher elevations, seeking coolness in mountain meadows? Do they follow some internal compass to places we’ll never know? Their return feels like a small miracle, a reminder that not all departures are permanent, that some absences are merely preparations for more meaningful homecomings.

From my window, Mount Meeker stands transformed, wearing its first blanket of snow like robes of ceremony. It rises with the dignity of Mount Fuji, that perfect cone suggesting permanence in a world of constant change. The snow signals winter’s approach. A thought that brings both anticipation and a curious reluctance. Part of me wants to hold onto these perfect autumn days, this golden pause between summer’s intensity and winter’s demands. Yet there’s beauty in the inexorable march of seasons, in knowing that each has its gifts and purpose.

The geese understand this. They gather now in gentle waves, their numbers swelling each day as if responding to some celestial summons. Soon their formations will darken the sky, their honking calls a soundtrack to migration that stirs something primitive in the human heart. There’s profound comfort in their predictable return, these creatures who navigate by stars and magnetic fields and instincts honed across countless generations. They ground me in the certainty that some things endure, that patterns persist even as individual moments slip away.

And what of my own transitions in this season of change? I find myself wondering what I’m releasing as autumn asks me to examine what I carry. The past weeks have brought an unexpected lightness, an engagement with the world that had been absent for so many years, as if something essential had finally stirred awake. Perhaps it’s nature working her quiet magic, the way cooler air seems to clear not just the summer haze but something in my own spirit. Or maybe it’s simply that autumn invites introspection in ways the demanding seasons cannot.

This awakening feels connected to fall’s particular way of marking time. There’s something about this season that makes us conscious of time’s passage. Not in the frantic way of spring’s urgent becoming or summer’s relentless growth, but with a contemplative awareness that allows for both gratitude and gentle release. All around me, the trees begin their slow surrender, their edges just touched with the colors that were there all along, hidden beneath summer’s green insistence. Scarlets and golds are beginning to show themselves like secrets on the verge of being told, reminding us that sometimes beauty requires letting go.

Watching this transformation, I’m reminded of my own circling patterns. In this season of return, where the elk and geese and robins are all finding their way back - I too feel called back to deeper currents when the surface heat subsides. But this year, something has shifted. There’s a willingness in me now that wasn’t there before, an openness to what the world might offer. Where once I might have pulled inward with the shortening days, I find myself leaning toward connection, toward participating in the season’s quiet invitations.

Maybe this is what wild creatures understand in their bones, that some seasons call us not to retreat but to show up differently, to inhabit our place in the larger story with new intention. The geese don’t hesitate at the vast distances they must travel; they simply answer what calls them. In autumn’s measured pace, in its patient unfolding, I’m rediscovering my own readiness to answer, to step forward into whatever conversation this season wants to have.

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—> What moments of natural wonder caught your attention this week? Please share your stories and photos in the comments below. Let’s experience nature’s gifts together.

As always, thank you so much for reading and supporting me.

Love,

Jane