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There is a season when time is made visible in the dying earth.

In a final breath the earth reveals her best. A bright canopy of red and orange and yellow cast shadows on the cooling soil speckled with patches of brown grass, dry, fragile shrubs, and the occasional fading flower.

The air is crisp and inviting for an afternoon walk before the day is shortened by the sun's sudden disappearance. With the setting sun, the crisp air becomes too cold for comfort, and the canopy of leaves is soon replaced by a canopy of bright stars dotting an endless black sea.

In October, the morning brings with it a gentle mist that clings to the earth until the sun shoos it away. The mist slowly dissipates, as if to end a dream, revealing a world that is one day closer to winter. Winter announces its certain arrival with a biting wind that detaches leaves from their last source of life, and blows them to their graves on the ground. As if to resist, or lengthen their inevitable fall, the leaves helplessly sway from side to side, slowing time for any passerby who stops to watch their long descent to the earth. And they pile up one upon the other, where they join the earth as she cools and decays.

Soon the earth pulls her white wool from her closet in the sky, and one flake at a time, knits a blanket to warm her in the cold. As the leaves descend and the snow covers the ground, the earth is reduced to a black and white photograph. Life is reduced only to a memory of things past somewhat blurry like the misty morning before the sun burns away the forgetfulness.

But not all dies with the coming of winter. Somewhere under the blanket of snow a heart beats softly.

It is this heart that gives us hope in the new life that comes. And this is why we give our thanksgiving in October.

Learn more about this author, Andrea Maclean.
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