Autumn Light

How do you write about something as elusive and etherial as light? The Impressionists painted it, Ansel Adams photographed it, countless musicians have attempted to depict it through melody. I’m often at a loss for words when attempting to describe the golden light of autumn.

This sunbeams-through-a-jar-of-honey quality of light occurs only in autumn. Joni Mitchells’ Chelsea Morning, where “the sun pours in like butterscotch” must surely have been written in October. As the Earth spins towards winter the sun appears lower and lower in the sky, the angle of the light changes, shadows get longer and the light takes on a dreamy quality. Add in the colors of changing leaves and this autumn light puts on quite a show. New England is famous for its fall colors, but now people are also coming here to Sonoma County to watch our own light show as it plays out over hundreds of acres of vineyards.

The light of autumn is the light of happy dreams, soothing and soft around the edges. The light of autumn and the feeling of autumn are one and the same, it’s difficult to separate the two. The light in winter is busy with rain, clouds and wind. Winter light is an expressway shuttling change to its next destination. The buttery light of autumn is in no hurry to get anywhere, it’s content to hang around all day burnishing the ochers, crimsons and yellows until they shine. Autumn light is a lucid daydream.

October days are drowsy. I can mind-trip from dawn to dusk and float like a butterfly that’s come unstuck in time. The light is a series of slow, deep inhales and long, cleansing exhales followed by a Zen-like silence. There’s a clarity to autumn light, I can see without ambiguity or doubt and everything is well defined.

In our part of the world, autumn skies are typically cloudless and storybook blue. At sunset long brushstrokes of cirrus clouds often paint the horizon. The diffused light that filters through adds an extra layer of dreaminess to everything. Against this backdrop migratory songbirds ride waves of autumn light north and south along the Pacific Flyway.

Autumn light has a soundtrack, it’s the crunch of leaves and the snap of acorns under my bike tires when I ride along the forested pathways of Santa Rosa Creek. In late afternoon the sun’s rays slant through the trees casting long, spindly shadows across the trail. It’s a scene straight out of The Hobbit. Autumn light has a smell too. It’s freshly carved pumpkins and the twin aromas of wet earth and rain after the first storm of the season has washed everything clean.

If “all the world’s a stage” as Shakespeare once famously said then autumn light is the spotlight that follows us as we move together through this wonderful season.