Autumn Journal: What Remains is Radiant
One year ago today, I began this journal.
Today I finish, while I have the strength to do it well.
The year’s circle is complete.
My final reflection is about the freedom of release.
About how letting go becomes the blessing.
About how, in the unclenching, we discover what remains.
And what remains is radiant.
Autumn Journal: Snow Flurry
Not quite snow. These early arrivals drift past my window like ash from a distant fire. They appear against dark trees, vanish against pale sky, disappear the moment they touch earth.
Autumn Journal: Dawn Cypress
Most trees now stand bare.
Autumn nears its final whisper. But one tree—an ancient Dawn Cypress—still holds its light.
This reflection is about sunset falling west, sunrise catching in the east, and the strange truth revealed when the world seemed to fold itself.
There are no beginnings. No endings.
Only a circle—wide enough for everything.
Autumn Journal: Hard Frost
Tonight brings the first hard frost.
What cannot flee, fades. What cannot bloom, waits. What cannot stay, dies with a kind of grace only frost can teach:
Beauty lives in letting go.
What seems to die… only deepens.
Autumn Journal: Witness
Steam curls from my coffee.
Sunlight threads through pine.
Five hours lost since midsummer, and still—this light, this table, this breath.
This reflection is about what remains.
Not symbol. Not story. Just this moment, luminous and complete.
Autumn Journal: Feast
This was not a good year for acorns.
No feast, no rustle of plenty beneath the oaks. Just empty branches and quiet ground.
This reflection is about wild turkeys, acorns, and the deep wisdom of feast and famine, the rhythm of everything.
Accept the feast.
Accept the famine.
Let go.
Autumn Journal: A Reaving Wind
The wind returned today.
Leaves that had clung through weeks of stillness now spin through the valley—spiraling, tumbling, letting go.
This reflection is about what trees already know, what autumn teaches in color and wind:
we are not separate. We are part of it.
Falling. Flying. Both.
Autumn Journal: Yellowjacket
Today felt like summer.
The maple leaves burned red, and hornets circled the last tomatoes.
This reflection is about the dying members of a broken home —
their hunger, their panic, their separateness.
And how, if we look closely, we might see something familiar in their flight.
Chasing sweetness. Fearing frost.
Autumn Journal: Golden Hour
Sunrise sets the valley ablaze—trees become torches, a doe turns to gold, and birds fill the air with coins of sound.
And then… rain. Silence. Letting go.
This reflection is about how beauty arrives without warning, and departs without apology.
And how, in its passing, it burns with the brilliance of the eternal.
Autumn Journal: Aurora
It’s been a remarkable year for sky—
rainbows in spring, an eclipse in April, and now, autumn’s faint aurora rising above the valley.
This reflection is about what we expect from wonder…
and what it means to witness something rare, even if it whispers instead of roars.
Sometimes, the night shines softly.
Sometimes, that’s enough.