Text and Photos by Henrylito D. Tacio
“I see you in September, when summer is gone,” so goes a line of a popular song. So, after summer, what comes next? It’s autumn!
Now, if you have the opportunity of going to the United States soon or someday, I suggest that you do it during the autumn season. You will have the best of your time. Yes, it’s a little bit cold but not that cold compared to the winter season. All you have to do is wear long pants and a jacket – and you’ll just be fine.
I had been to the US six times. Two of those visits had taken place during the autumn season. The first time I saw those trees with varied colors (green, yellow, orange, red, and brown), I asked my sister if they were flowers. “No,” she replied, “Those are leaves.”
It was then that I believed what Albert Camus said. “Autumn,” he said, “is a second spring when every leaf’s a flower.” If you don’t believe me, see these pictures in this essay.
A lot of American authors hailed autumn. John Keats, the author of To Autumn, wrote: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; / Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; / To bend with apples the moss’d cottage trees, / And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core.”
Wendell Phillips exalted: “Thrice happy time, / Best portion of the various year, in which Nature rejoiceth, smiling on her works / Lovely, to full perfection wrought!”
Richard Henry Stoddard can’t help but marvel: “Divinest Autumn! who may paint thee best, / Forever changeful o’er the changeful globe? / Who guess thy certain crown, thy favorite crest, / The fashion of thy many-colored robe?”
Famous authors were never run out of words when describing autumn. George Eliot penned: “Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
Robert Frost compared: “O suns and skies and clouds of June, and flowers of June together. Ye cannot rival for one hour October’s bright blue weather.”
William Shakespeare, the father of English literature, pointed out: “There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!”
Stanley Horowitz said it best: “Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.”
Veteran newshen Raissa Robles said she likes autumn best. I do, too. Why? Allow me to quote the words of an unknown author: “Autumn is easily my favorite time of the year. The days have cooled down, the leaves have turned, and the world is busy preparing herself for winter. There’s something magical about the clear, brisk days, the first smell of the woodstove or the fireplace, the first frost, the sounds of the Canadian geese overhead as they pass through on their way south, the canning of the late fruits and vegetables, the pumpkin and cider stands on the roadways.
“School has started, and there’s newness in the air, even though the season is the precursor to winter. Somehow, the world knows that winter is necessary, and the long preparation for the cold of winter – the preparation which is autumn – is a beautiful, necessary part of the world.”
