~~artist unknown
I like this picture, no I tell a lie, I love this picture. The beautiful colored leaves, colorful mums, ripe pumpkins standing guard, I can smell the crisp air and the hint of coal smoke on the breeze, the smell of fallen leaves in the bright sun. Rustling leaves are almost the only sound, the drone of the crickets is gone, faintly off in the distance a dog or more likely a coyote. A chattering chipmunk who thinks I am in his way and a lone bird calling, this is quiet. This is autumn.
Autumn, is a time when past and future meet, time appears to be fluid and what separates the world of living and dead, the worlds of living and dead, becomes very unstabler. The belief that the veil between worlds has become very thin, even permeable is one our ancestors knew and passed down to us. Autumn remains a time to reflect for many of us as the light and warmth of summer becomes the dark and chill of winter.
Autumn is the olden tymes or the year, for at Samhain the New Year begins, and may-be that has something to do with reflecting on the past. The connections to our own past, as well as the long past, and even the legendary past, are much easier to make. Amid all our modern lives the circle of all life and time is easiest to see at this time of year. Misty mornings and earlier and earlier sunsets, which made our ancestors ponder what was beyond the circle of the fires light or what mysteries the mists were hiding, really isn't lost on us.
Hand woven fencing enclosing a yard, and that could be fuel for the bonfire is piled high in the center of that yard. Pumpkins at the entrance, an entrance topped by a a carefully woven hat. A blending of ideas and cultures, field pumpkins were not known in Europe until the seed was brought back to England after the first colonys were settled in America,the idea a pumpkins as guardians may come from a belief that vampires were more sensitive to and therefor more repulsed by them than garlic. Here was the place where people would come on the last night of the year, to build fires to fend of evil, while they honored those who had died in the past year, and as a beacon so that those who had wandered off and might be lost on the other side of the veil could find their way back. A place to give thanks for the harvest and to ask for safety in the coming dark half of the the year, as everyone made ready to wait for the days to grow longer and warmer again.
