Autumn

Having your heart broken is always tough but having it broken for the first time is brutal. Because you haven’t yet learned that you will survive it. Once you do, you stash that knowledge in your back pocket. And if you are unlucky enough to have it happen again, it will still be awful, but you know you will get through it. I suppose that’s what wisdom is. 

Walking through the woods, the ground a carpet of shrivelled leaves that rustle underfoot, little clumps lie in eddies around big rocks where they’ve gotten caught coming down in the rush of rain that fell over the weekend. A trail I’ve hiked hundreds of times looks different than it did a week ago.

The cool, closed-in feeling of a forest bursting with life has given way to a starker landscape. And a sky that keeps me company on the walk. I look up from the root-bound trail and see a sign far ahead, pointing the way to Spruce Lake. When the woods are full of leaf, the sign only appears when I’m right in front of it. But with the bare trees, and looking up at just the right moment, the sign is visible long before I get there. And it comes to me that I, too, am in autumn. The autumn of my life. 

I remember my mum telling me about getting past menopause and the invisibility cloak it conferred. People just don’t see you anymore, she told me. I didn’t believe her then, but I see it now. Introducing myself to someone for the tenth time because I no longer make an impression. My mum said, there is a veil over everyone’s eyes, a hormonal energy that exists in social situations where people are assessing each other’s attractiveness and social standing. As a woman of a certain age, you can observe from the outside and see right through the mist that muddies people’s vision.

And she was right. It’s like watching people being affected by a force field that has no hold on me. And I have to admit I enjoy the clarity it brings. Is this what being a crone is? Once I got past the feeling of being inconsequential, it feels like a superpower. A cloaking mechanism that allows one to really see what’s going on.

I watched a movie recently, a 1943 National Film Board documentary about a year ago in Les Éboulements, a rural community on the north shore of the fleuve. The farming family makes it through the snowy winter and when spring comes it’s time to make the year’s soap for the homestead. Out comes old Grand-père, the only one with the knowledge of how to dose the ingredients and how long to boil the concoction. Grand-père is wizened and bent. He’s 70, the narrator tells us. I remember when 70 sounded so old. It doesn’t anymore. 

Yes, I’ve had to trade my youth for wisdom. And my skin will never be taut again, but I know I can love this planet better than any twenty-year-old. I cherish my hard-won arsenal of knowledge. There is calm and comfort in feeling prepared for what life throws at me, in the crunch of leaves beneath my feet, in seeing through the veil. I’m not ready for the snow to fall. But I do love my season.

Sarah Cobb