It’s almost time to plant the garlic (a waning moon is on the way and that’s what the old gardeners recommend) and I’ll try later today to get in one last round on the mower before the tired grass finally lays itself down for her winter nap. It’s strange, though, to sit in the woods and still see so much green. I feel hoodwinked into thinking that summer isn’t really over.

But…it’s autumn and we’ve hauled out some of the blankets that’ll carry us warmly through our many chilly nights from now until late April. April…that sounds impossibly far away. Best to embrace what’s in front of us, within arm’s reach instead of looking wistfully over our shoulders for the remnants of the rough summer we’ve had, or too far ahead into a future that gives many of us nightmares so close to the election. Too cold to go swimming but warm enough for a drizzly rainfall. The ombre of greens around us look tired and spent but a full and complete leaf-drop is still weeks away. Seventeen acres of goldenrod have gone from a glowing saffron to a muted and dusty ochre, dotted here and there by the pure white seeds of neighboring milkweed pods, burst open and flinging themselves through the air to catch on what’s left of the ironweed stalks. It’s been a good year for milkweed; I’m hopeful for next year’s monarch season.

Until then, we live in the in-between, the not-yet, the still-unfolding as fall takes her time and summer’s memories still whisper their ghosts across the land. On the walk this morning, a tiny, singular bloom of Queen Ann’s Lace stood stark and determined to cheer me, impossible to miss in a sea of fading emerald crabgrass. Tiny white and lavender asters give an oil-painted look to what’s left of August’s wingstems along the walking path, helping us all transition into the darker days ahead with their encouraging pop of colors. As I walk, I want to thank each and every leaf on the ground for the shade they gave us in July, the breezes they caught in their green palms as they waved to us from way above our heads. Autumn’s winds make the sycamores look like they’re shivering, their remaining leaves trembling in a long and anxious farewell. What they teach us about letting go could fill a library.

And so we step, perhaps a bit reluctantly, into the season of release and reflection, distract ourselves with flavorful soups and a bit more toast than we’d have eaten three months ago, buttered all the way to the edges. I am anxious about who we’ll be as a nation in the weeks ahead; love and respect seem thin on the ground for our kind, and I long for kindness, hope, transformation anchored in the deepest regard we can carve out for one another. No matter the outcome on November 5, we are still called to make this human community thing work, to be inclusive and nonjudgmental, to fill sandbags before the floods come and pluck our neighbors off the roofs of their floating houses. We are made for better times and we must choose it over all that competes for our attention right now—convenience, fear of scarcity, dehumanizing the family next door who doesn’t look like us, loud voices insisting on violence, unhealed biases that put more distance between us.

In the midst of so much ruminating, I can hear my late mother-in-law giving voice to one of her favorite truisms: “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift, that’s why it’s called ‘the present’”.

Well, then. There’s the task before us as we live in the in-between.

Receive the gift. And be sure to thank autumn for making it so beautiful.