Tiny Owl Dispatch No. 5: A Love Letter To Autumn
The Autumnal Equinox on Sunday brought cooler temperatures and vibrant colors - let's celebrate!
The Tiny Owl Dispatch is an extra monthly newsletter for paid subscribers. It’s a bit more personal, often includes an exclusive video (although not this issue, sorry), and always an extra nature journal prompt. To mark the Autumnal Equinox, I’ve opened this issue to everyone. Enjoy!
Before relocating to the East Coast, I was in love with the idea of autumn.
The books I grew up reading, like Little Women and Little House on the Prairie, shaped my idea of a season poorly represented by the construction paper leaves my Southern Californian elementary school teachers taped to the classroom walls. When I saw the real thing, I was completely taken with its romance, and what I have learned from a lifetime of appreciating nature – you cannot build it up too much in your mind. It will always exceed expectations.
I grew up in bifurcated seasons.
It was wet (brief), then dry (long), and nothing in between. I was parched in a climate that saw very little moisture. Every day I thirsted for a location with four seasons.
After graduating from college, I worked and saved for a couple of years until I had money to travel to the East Coast. While I had traveled extensively throughout the Western United States and Canada, I had never been to the states east of the Rocky Mountains.
In October I took the red-eye to the Mid-Atlantic states for a week-long full vacation experience. That first day was foggy, rainy, and damp. A rainy day out west can only aspire to that much moisture. I loved it.
The rain soon cleared, and I spent the week sightseeing. It was crisp, cool, and blustery. The sun was shining, and the landscape was awash with the most glorious colors. Red, burgundy and purple! Myriad shades of green. Bright glowy yellows, mellow ochres, and rich browns. Rusty orange and burnt sienna. Cobalt and cerulean blues. Cool and warm white. It felt strange for October as I knew it and yet completely familiar, too.
It answered a question deep in my soul.
I’m extending my stay another week and if I can find a job and a place to live by the end of the week, I impulsively told myself, I’m staying. The apartment came first, followed a day later by a job offer. I found a habitat in which I belonged, and I never returned to California. The ebb and flow of seasons, weather, light, and dark – it matched my biorhythms.
Did I do something foolhardy?
Two weeks into my relocation, I spent an entire night crying for the life I ended on one coast and in fear of failing the life I had begun on the new coast, but, no, it was not a foolish move. I had done what was necessary to thrive. I was free and wild, and because I was young this new sensation felt scary for a while.
The new environment I found myself in felt like home. I was surrounded by old growth trees and uncultivated plants allowed to grow wild by the roadside. Two hundred year old buildings nestled in the rolling hills with 300 year old trees that had witnessed America’s nascent days. It was natural and manmade history coexisting together.
During my lunch hour I would walk the wild gardens around the museum where I worked in the art conservation lab, mentally mapping the streams, trees, and other landmarks to find my way back. If the Canadian geese were migrating, I’d eat my lunch observing them from a rock wall perch overlooking the pond that was their rest stop. I wasn’t nature journaling back then, but I was constantly making mental notes to add to my non-nature journal that evening.
My love letter to actual autumn
Why do I love autumn so much? Firstly, it’s the scent that pulls me in. The mornings have a particular fresh, clean smell. If “crispy” were a scent, it would be autumn. Then there is the underlying aroma of wood stoves, the loamy soil, and apples ripening on the trees.
I feel like I’ve arrived at the beginning, which I suppose is odd given that it’s nature preparing to bed down for the winter. Perhaps it’s all the activity surrounding me. Some birds migrating south, while others are preparing to winter in place. The squirrels busy gathering their winter stores. The bees, butterflies, and dragonflies capturing the last nectar from the hydrangeas before tucking themselves away for the colder months. All this energy perks me up!
I love the aforementioned myriad of colors, and how the golden light of fall seems to add a warm, rich patina to everything. It’s brilliant without being ostentatious. The mellowness melts into my soul.
The science behind loving fall
CBS News reports that 45% of surveyed Americans love fall above the other seasons. While I wholeheartedly agree (although I think each season has its charms), I wonder why? So I dug into the science. (Note: I’m broadly summarizing my findings and encourage you to do your own research.)
Psychologists report that autumn provides a particular temporal landmark. According to Yasmine Saad, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist and founder and director of psychological services at Madison Park Psychological Services,
Temporal landmarks divide life into distinct mental phases. They allow us to put in the past negative experiences and propel a fresh outlook.
We are socially conditioned from childhood to view autumn as turning a page. It’s a new school year. We meet new people. We are involved in new activities. It’s funny, but as I’m writing this I realize that with very few exceptions I’ve always started new jobs in the fall.
There is also the comfort of resuming a steady routine after the summer. We are back at work, at school, back on a schedule. It’s the counterweight to the perceived freedom of the summer months.
Being outside in autumn (in the Northern Hemisphere) is invigorating and attractive. Cooler temperatures and spectacular foliage draws us outdoors into nature. Edward O. Wilson, a Professor emeritus of Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, published his “biophilia hypothesis” in the early 1980s, and according to him, contact with nature is essential for the human psyche, and findings show that our physical health also depends on influences of nature. Being outside scratches that itch.
It’s also the “golden hour” season because of the soft, warm, golden quality of the sunlight. This is because the sun sits lower in the sky, casting longer shadows and bathing everything it touches with a beautiful rich, amber light, which is known to stimulate joy.
Personally I think it’s the wearing of sweaters and scarves – it’s like being in a perpetual hug, and we associate the onset of cooler weather with “hugging benefits.” According to this article on MedicineNet:
A 10-second hug helps the body fight infections, eases depression, and lessens tiredness… [and a]… 20-second hug reduces the harmful effects of stress, relieves blood pressure, and ensures a healthy heart.
Imagine what a whole day of a cozy sweater is doing to your dopamine levels. No wonder autumn is a favorite season of so many!
Gratitude
This season is also an anniversary for me, because eighteen years ago I landed in an even older growth forest in the most eastern and northern part of the country. It’s a mix of deciduous and coniferous trees supporting a rich ecosystem of plants, animals, and insects, and I’ve been most fortunately able to explore, and now share, it with you!
I’m grateful for all the seasons that roll around the Wheel of the Year. They all have their own personality that just flows from one season into the next. In these tricky times – personally, nationally, and globally – I lean into the security that no matter what each turn reveals, endings are beginnings and each new season brings discovery.
For now, I’m just reveling in this most colorful and inspiring season.
xoSusannah
Prompt
This edition’s prompt is about being present in whatever unfolds for you in the season where you live (hello, Southern Hemisphere, I see you).
Choose a subject - something in your garden, something in the wild, string safari an area, etc, and dedicate a two-page spread in your journal to it.
Perpetual Journal style - once a week revisit your subject and journal about it. Sketch it, record your notes, write about it - use INIWIRMO as your framework. (Check out the “Next Reads” section below for a perpetual journal resource I wrote last year.)
Commit to doing this once a week over a two to three month period and notice any changes, sameness, etc, and record that in your journals. What do you notice, wonder, and what does it remind you of?
News & Upcoming Events
The next Nature Journal With Me Video: Drops before the end of the month.
I’m considering doing a Live Journal With Me here on Substack: So you may have heard that Substack is rolling out the capability to go live on video, and I thought it would be awesome to host an hour-long live journal-with-me session bi-weekly. Currently only “Bestsellers” have this capability, but Substack will begin rolling this out to the rest of us plebeians in the coming months. I’ve applied for early release, so we’ll see, but in the meantime I’d love to know your thoughts. Would you like to join me for a live session or is that just too much? Let me know in the comments or reply to this email. And thank you!
Next Reads
Thank you for your continuing support!
Support
Cricklewood is a space where we can learn from nature and each other as we rewild. Because nature journaling is so beneficial to our well-being, I make almost all of the content available to all subscribers.
To be completely blunt, however, Cricklewood cannot exist without the support of its readers. This publication provides one of my income streams in a year with paid subscriptions funding all content creation and activities that happen here.
If you find this content interesting, valuable, and want to support this project, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Other ways to support my work
If a paid subscription isn’t for you, consider hiring me for illustration or purchase original art.
Sharing this newsletter, commenting on posts, and engaging with my posts on Notes (in the App) are all fine ways of supporting my work.
And finally, if you just can’t swing a subscription but want access to all the content, just drop me an email and ask me to comp you a paid subscription. I’m happy to do so, no explanations needed. Things happen to all of us, and I don’t want lack of funds to be the reason you can’t reap the benefits of nature journaling.
I loved this. I think the mixing of memory and season is such a powerful thing, a balm, but also a marker in the years of our lives. Strong magic! Your personal journey, tied in to that of nature, makes for enchanting reading. Thank you.
A lovely essay Susannah! 👏 I took the reverse migration path: most of my life in New England, now in southern CA. I don't miss the long cold winters or hot humid summer days, but I do year for those dream-like days of Autumn with all their delights. Enjoy! 🍁