A walk in Autumn
It rained heavily during the night until the early hours of the morning. Autumn took possession of the clock. To say that a new cycle is beginning would be lying. If there has been a beginning, it dates from a few years ago to the power of billions. I don’t really know the number. It seems that, according to the calculations of physicists, the universe will one day end, not in an incredible cataclysm, but rather with an eternity of elapsed time.
This season is not to be compared to that, but since it is my favorite, my heart absorbs it like a leaf melts docilely into the cellulose of dead bark.
I like to take my vacation in the fall. I say it every year, I feel good in the rippling light of the passage to the silence of winter, as if summer, knowing that it is dying, is enjoying one last time, and proudly, its vitality.
Yes, the colors are beautiful, starting with that yellow so complementary to the greenery.
Taking advantage of a lull in both clouds and rain, I decided to go for a walk, starting with the small park near my house where I don’t often set foot anymore. Because of COVID or because it’s the middle of the week, few people were walking there. The park hasn’t really changed in years. It has enough space to not run into anyone and has a small curved walkway that you can walk through for three or four thoughts.
I later joined the Saint-Sulpice woodland. Despite a noisy avenue flanking one of its sides, the place manages to remain calm. Several convoluted paths run through it. They are simple dryland trails. Trees live and die there without the appearance of human intervention. Branches fall, trunks split, mushrooms take advantage of it.
The wooded area is not very large; one quickly crosses it. We immediately regret finding the cement of a sidewalk. I turned around a few times to immerse myself in the quiet and humid smell of the paths, listening to the buzzing of insects – or was it amphibians? – I lost myself among the asymmetrical bodies of the vegetation that gives up, observing the one that persists, and signs the summer green, witnessing that what dies is absorbed by what is alive.
This nature is a little bit the same everywhere. The season resembles the one we liked so much the year before. Let it be so. What makes life sacred is that we are given the privilege to feel its warmth in our veins, to sense the rhythm of the seasons through the slowing down of our heartbeat while the universe patiently starts over again.
