Autumn Under a Summer Sky

It's autumn. The colors in the trees animate the landscape, but a biting wind forces you to mourn the end of summer. You're already preparing to face winter by considering putting away your summer toys.

You put on a slightly warmer coat, greet your neighbor as you leave, and open your garage door while gritting your teeth at the indescribable mess that reigns in your toy chest.

It's that summer makes you less organized, less orderly, more carefree. You easily conjugate running, climbing, swimming and paddling, but mix up the verbs "organize" and "throw." You catch yourself smiling when you manage to close the garage door before everything collapses, and when you can't, you discreetly extend your foot to push back what's sticking out, just so the neighbors don't think you're "a slob who doesn't know how to live," because honestly, you don't have time to waste wondering what others do with their time.

Even though the days are longer in summer, you always feel like time is too short. You know the heat doesn't last and the bugs will make your life difficult to remind you of it. But nothing can undermine your enthusiasm. There are so many things to do during the beautiful season that you'd surely add 3 extra months of July to the calendar, if you were appointed minister of family.

It's while looking at the mess in your garage that you think about all this. You revisit the new summits you've reached, you think back to all those fits of laughter while camping, your bike excursions and all those hours swimming and paddling in the clear waters of an isolated lake.

Then you wake up the next day, your back a bit stiff after spending hours organizing, but with a mood less scattered than the day before. The sun is radiant and the air is dry and warm, stirring other summer memories in you, but this time, from a forgotten era. It's that in your now so well-organized garage, you found an object, a treasure you thought you had lost forever and which has been magically returned to you.

You hold the object in your hand and look at it with emotion, trying to make the lump climbing your throat with its steel ice axes and troubling baggage pass. But the sun shines and changes your mood. Its rays reflect on the metallic surface of the object of your melancholy, making the adventure possibilities offered by this improbable heat shimmer.

You hesitate, but not for long. You remove your hoodie and run your hand through your hair, just to make sure you still have your head on straight. You put the object back in its box with delicacy, overwhelmed by this emotional about-face. You're afraid it's one of those dreams that's too good to be true.

Yet you're not dreaming. Every autumn (or almost) a climatic phenomenon of sudden warming occurs, you know this because you learned it in school. But here the phenomenon you feel is not just climatic, it's something that emanates from a part of you that was buried.

You could let yourself drift on the swell of nostalgic thoughts that animate your past, but instead you start to smile. Because when you were little, you imagined that at this time of year, Indians hid in the woods to scare those who didn't respect nature. You've always been aware of the value of things that grow, this passion still drives you today, which is why you can't help but smile, despite the pain that overwhelms you.

Now that you're an adult, you know that this sudden warming usually occurs after the first frosts, between early October and early November when tropical winds take advantage of atmospheric contrasts caused by the decrease in hours of sunlight to move north.

You've already heard of the expression "Indian summer" which was supposedly used for the first time in Pennsylvania at the end of the 18th century in reference to the period when sedentary Native Americans of the North completed their harvests and stored their provisions for winter. But you're not sure it's as fun as the imagined schemes of a wise people thirsting for justice.

What you're certain of is that it will last at least three days and there's very little chance of rain. You then return to dreaming of all the possibilities offered by this last window on summer: a final road trip through Quebec's most beautiful villages, the American East Coast or Ontario, an epic hike to a new summit, a camping weekend, a last evening around the fire, a bike ride, kayaking or canoeing, a day of climbing... At most, in three days, you'd have time to do all that...

But you look at the box in front of you thinking about the object inside and you know that right now, you need something different.

It's an opportunity for you to make peace with the past. To go spend a day outside without purpose, just to disconnect. To mentally prepare yourself for the cold period ahead and the feeling of isolation that accompanies the veil of darkness.

Because it's indeed darkness that you see in this object. The darkness of death in all its splendor. A death that darkens all the colors of colors, an end that wants to be the beginning of something you didn't know yet and which, in your memories, had shaken you from head to toe.

Then suddenly, everything comes back to you.

You were 10 years old. One October morning, your father died suddenly without you having time to prepare for it.

Today, you hold in your hands the last gift he had given you for your birthday the day before. You always refused to use it, convinced it was linked to this cruel twist of fate. You were far too frightened at the prospect of seeing too far. Of having to face in advance all the deaths you couldn't see yet, even if you would have preferred to see your father's coming.

If you had known, you would have been more organized, more orderly, less carefree as your father would have wished.

You would have cleaned your room and taken out the trash as he had asked.

You would have done your homework when you got home from school instead of sneaking into the basement to watch your cartoons.

You would have stopped making your sister scream to let her relax after work.

You would have had the courage to turn off your night light to face the darkness.

But seeing it this morning, after the distance of all these years, there's something in you that told you that you were ready. Ready to face the true nature of destiny, ready to discover this new summit you'd have to conquer, ready to contemplate the grandeur of the sky without the sun to guide you.

You took the box in your hands, blew away the dust of years while making a wish. A wish you cannot share, for fear that your hope might fly away with the last leaves clinging to the trees.

You unwrap your gift, like on your 10th birthday, this astronomical telescope is a completely unexpected treasure. A model that stands on legs, it's a wish "enhancer" well anchored on earth, like your father was. You can't hold back the tear that slides down your cheek.

The Indians surely knew it too, that's why they made this autumn period their summer. During this enclave of warmth, time pleases change and the earlier darkness makes us bend the knee and tilt our heads toward the stars.

Inspired by this poetry, you take a night walk to reach your favorite summit. Your objective: find the Big Dipper to locate the North Star, your guide toward the approaching winter. At this thought, you're shaken by a shiver, thinking of your father you can finally smile. It's your love of nature that prepared you for this moment, somewhere in you, nature's cycles have always been your guides.

You realize today that everything happens for a reason. If your father hadn't left so early maybe you would never have cultivated this passion for nature...

It's not darkness that we contemplate with our heads turned toward the stars, but the reflection of this light that shines within us.

Summer is always there somewhere in you.

There is only an end if we decide to stop dancing.

Sources:

https://www.meteomedia.com/

https://fr.wikipedia.org/

https://www.carrefourdequebec.com/

https://www.science-et-vie.com/

https://voyageraucanada.com/

https://www.voyagevoyage.ca/