I looked at my watch, which goes very well, and found that it was but six o’clock; and still thinking it something extraordinary that the sun should rise so early, I looked into the almanac, where I found it to be the hour given for his rising on that day. I looked forward, too, and found he was to rise still earlier every day till towards the end of June; and that at no time in the year he retarded his rising so long as till eight o’clock. Your readers, who with me have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon, and seldom regard the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of his rising so early; and especially when I assure them, that he gives light as soon as he rises. I am convinced of this. I am certain of my fact. One cannot be more certain of any fact. I saw it with my own eyes. And, having repeated this observation the three following mornings, I found always precisely the same result.
Benjamin Franklin, An Economical Project
Yesterday was the first day of Winter.
While I realize that the calendar says otherwise, the truth, for a working person, is that the end of daylight savings is the true beginning of seasonal darkness. For now is the time of year when I both leave and arrive home in darkness and view daylight mainly from the other side of my office window. I do get out now and then during a working day for lunch or for errands, but, from here on, my main exposure to what remains of Fall will be on weekends.
It is too bad it is so, for Fall in Humptulips County has arrived at that magical moment when the trees are tantalizingly transparent: many leaves have fallen to form heavy drifts of fallen clothing, but enough remain so that the internal skeleton of trunk, limb and twig is seductively semi-revealed. Now is the time to savor the exuberance of Fall by walking beneath the remaining canopy, absorbing the musty air, and listening to the ever present rustling of dried leaves.
We are on the cusp of Winter. Either the next storm or the one following will strip the trees bare and Fall will expire in a festival of organic decay. In a few weeks, the glory of Fall will remain only in the smell of musk that will last until the fallen leaves are finally absorbed into the wet and mud of pre-Winter storms and in the fury of those storms. The joys of this impending part of Fall are not for the fair-weather admirers of color, but for the stouthearted hikers who appreciate the storms of late Fall as nature’s mechanism to clean the air and prepare the ground for Winter.
Fall’s exuberant declamation of color is just about to metamorphosize into the spare simplicity of light and delicate tracery of Winter and I will miss much of that transformation here on the other side of my glass. Living in canyons of concrete and steel, I will fall into the trap of warmth which lies within these walls and miss the power of the coming storms. I will miss the howling of the wind and the pelting of the rain – and probably feel some relief for having done so. But a part of me would much rather be outside on a country lane, well protected by coat and hat, savoring the power of the elements.
And so I reluctantly have turned back my clock, for not to do so would sever the necessary synchronization of human commerce. But as I look at this year’s calendar I now realize that I can begin a countdown of days. For a year from now I will be leaving the shelter of these office walls for the blessings of retirement, one of which will be the enjoyment of the storms of late Fall during the daylight hours then restored to me.
I am more than tempted to mount poster board on my office walls and strike through the passing days until the time comes when I no longer dance to the rhythm of commerce, but only to the rhythm of nature. I look forward to my impending freedom from the tyranny of man’s annual manipulation of the clock.
