There’s a rhythm to the seasons that I’ve gotten used to over the years. When I crest a mountain trail in late September, the leaves are just a smidge past their prime, the brush is burnt orange and desiccating and my hair is the dried grass, my eyes the crisp of a blue autumn sky. I am in-step with this life’s rhythm.
Having moved, further away, to a lower altitude, I miss the timing by a quarter of a step. Fifteen or 20 days off, I am left nostalgic for other falls when I crested the same hill I have for 8 or 10 or 15 years.
Missing the familiar way it caught my eye and inspired my heart. Yet it weighed me down too. I couldn’t keep doing the same things over and over again. So I moved on. Reminded myself of my gypsy-soul and how I’ve always yearned to keep my feet moving, keep living new places, breathing new scents, seeing new wildlife, drinking in new vistas.
Stagnating so long in one beautiful place, I have forgotten the fearlessness of new places, the exhilaration of chasing all that’s new.
Here now, I am torn between the yearning I feel for the familiar changes of September, and the exhilaration of this new place with its longer season, warmer fall, when it has not yet snowed and the leaves are just now turning. Stimulated by the newness of this place, the joy of different mountains that spread views farther and wider, with a broader palate of clouds splayed before me. My soul sprawls and expands here. And with the new room to spread out, it breathes a sigh of relief. There is opportunity.
Space.
The rain drops are bigger, their patter louder, drowning out more of what I couldn’t stop hearing before.
And yet.
It is still autumn. The leaves are still changing. My knee hurts the way it does this time of year. My regrets are the same as they were when the beat of my life was a quarter off what it is today. My insecurities are not gone.
My choice is more visible though. I have chosen this reset. How will I set my attention? On this new experience? Will I put my energy forward the way I mean to? Or are the background noises simply different? Is this a cover of my same life’s song?
I believe the bridge has arrived. The soundscape of this fall’s sky will set me right if I set the metronome with intention.
To go into the world and live deliberately. To examine what life has to offer. To not, when I face death, rue an unexamined life. Not regret the songs I never sang. Instead, to belt it all out; to soar.
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