As I was sitting and resting in my car, I pondered the colorful copse of trees before me. The thought occurred to my mind that an autumnal bower with its dappled, golden light and playing beams is a place of magic — a meeting place for the world of fancy and the world of the senses.
If one is very quiet and very still and allows the realm of imagination and wonder to open, the citizens of story, of history, of legend will be there, amongst the trees, to welcome the visitor, not as an interloper, but as a friend.
One may come to understand the language of the animals — to decipher the animated discourses of the squirrels protecting their winter hoards, the call of the birds to their comrades flying south. In the kaleidoscopic poetry of a fall thicket, one should not be shocked if a chipmunk were to scurry up and ask for an opinion on where to find food or if a shy deer were to blink curiously from a protective bush.
Then again, one may espy fairies frolicking on sunbeams and dryads giggling among the branches as they wink mischievously at the human sojourner in this dreamy region of natural enchantment.
And listen! That crunch of leaves may just be the footfall of General Washington as he exhorts his footsore and ragged troops to manful endurance. Or it may be a band of hobbits seeking forgotten ancestral gold. Perhaps it is Jane Eyre fleeing heartbreak and betrayal and seeking repose on the lap of Mother Nature.
It’s possible I am “too fond of books and it has turned [my] brain.” (Louisa May Alcott)
But to sit and absorb this fanciful wonderment, to let this natural beauty and autumnal serenity seep into one’s skin and mind and heart is to begin to find healing and wholeness.
We may echo Anne Shirley’s declaration: “Dear old world. You are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.” (L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables)
For the imprint of God, “the original source of beauty,” is here, and His “imperishable spirit is in all things.” (Wisdom 13:3; 11:26)
Uncle George 