The seasonal shift
[Closes eyes, inserts fingers in ears, stubbornly ignores the onset of autumn]
Here we are again. It’s in the air, the slant of the light, the hastening dusk. The seasons are shifting.
I’m not ready for it. Not. At. All.
Late summer days slick with freedom and ease slip through my fingers too fast, my tight, knuckle-white grip not slowing them down.
This year, September signals more than mere melancholy at return to routine.
This year, it brings change.
Needed, wanted, wished-for change.
Positive change.
But with it a requirement to leave behind the safe and the known and the comfortable. Push forward to the new, to the greener grass.
I read a fantastic fictionalisation of the Brontës’ story over the summer—Jude Morgan’s The Taste of Sorrow—in which Branwell puts into words exactly what I’m feeling. The overwhelm on the precipice.
“Imagine somebody takes you to the top of the hill and shows you a world spread out before you and says: ‘That’s yours, all of it, as far as the eye can see: now, enter into possession of it. But that comfortable corner behind you? No, you must leave that.’”
I’m not alone in feeling this. My daughter is right here with me, similarly struggling to find footing in the shifting swell. I hold her hand, and the space for her feelings, and our collective nerve (most days).
I’ve come to realise that I’m not afraid of change. It’s more about struggling in the discomfort of transition. The disorientation of the liminal space. I want us to get where we’re going, absolutely I do. But the getting us there, some days that feels too much.
And while my soft summer soul will never truly adore autumn (resolutely unmoved by bouquets of newly sharpened pencils, pumpkin spice lattes, girls in plaid playing in piles of dead leaves), again I acknowledge that what I actually find hard is the seasonal shift—mourning the loss of warmth and length and spaciousness, bemoaning the reimposition of a routine that in a week or so I will likely be grateful for.
A deep breath.
Then onward, to rediscovering the particular delights found when the heat dies and the light fades.
To blankets and candles and bundled-up walks.
And a brave new world.
To distract myself from my transitional discomfort, I’ve gathered together a selection of quotations beautifully capturing this seasonal shift. A couple of my favourites I’ve shared before. They are favourites for a good reason.
“‘Anyway it will be autumn tomorrow or the next day: I can smell it in the air — summer smouldering.’
Just before I bedded down I stood at the window. And he was right — the first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it was too late.”
A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr is a quiet masterpiece. The story of a broken man in the aftermath of the First World War, Tom Birkin travels from London to rural Yorkshire, hired to restore an ancient mural on a church wall. In turn the methodical work and immersion in the rhythm and detail of a country summer restore him. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, and with a heatwave due in the UK this week, there’s still time to read it immersed in the sunshine it deserves.
“Every year, the bright Scandinavian summer nights fade away without anyone’s noticing. One evening in August you have an errand outdoors, and all of a sudden it’s pitch-black. A great warm, dark silence surrounds the house. It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive. It has come to a standstill; nothing withers, and autumn is not ready to begin. There are no stars yet, just darkness.”
Another classic seasonal read and an all-time favourite of mine, Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book centres on the relationship between a grandmother and granddaughter told through vignettes of their summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. It is simultaneously unsentimental and heartwarming, day-to-day life and nature indelibly intertwined. And of course Jansson perfectly captures the summer’s end—the final chapter simply titled ‘August’.
I reread Benjamin Myers’ The Offing this summer. A book that in many ways parallels A Month in the Country—a young man’s journey into new self-understanding after a summer steeped in nature and new people.
Robert Appleyard sets out from his village in Durham intent on pressing pause on the seemingly inevitable path from school to coalface. He walks from place to place and eventually finds himself in Robin Hood’s Bay on the Yorkshire coast and in the company of Dulcie, a fascinating woman and all-round force of nature. Dulcie introduces Robert to poetry and literature (not to mention some fine food and drink), and slowly unfurls the belief in him that he can create a different life.
As with Tom Birkin noticing the onset of autumn, Robert’s sudden awareness of the seasonal shift heralds a close to his current adventure:
“Something changed in the air that night. I awoke to dribbles of condensation glistening on the window and the sight of my breath billowing from beneath my blankets with each yawning exhalation.
The breeze had changed direction and the air had an edge to it now. It was bladed. It tasted damp and nutty. we were approaching the turning season of smoke and decay, of nest-building and leaves curling. The time of plenty promised by a summer that had seemed endless in its infancy was now drawing to a close, as it always does, yet it had somehow, for a while at least, managed to trick my mind into thinking that the outcome might possibly be different. Just as comfort and complacency were in danger of becoming a habit, and a pervasive sense of pleasurable slothfulness had begun to define each day, the lifting winds now brought autumn’s advance party. We had entered the dying days.”
And finally, last week I stumbled across this perfect poem in the Candlewick Press Ten Poems for a Picnic collection. Short, seasonal, slightly existential, this resonates beautifully (and oh that final line!):
Blackberrying: A Conversation Piece by Jeremy Hooker
Whether birds feel joy in their flight
Whether one's lifework might be something no one wants
Whether one will end up living in a cardboard box
Whether love is an element like air or fire
Such are the questions on their purple tongues.
So how do you find this transitional time? And any favourite books about the turning of the season that I should add to my list?
(Newsletter includes affiliate links to Bookshop.org, an excellent bookselling website supporting indie bookshops)
Extra credit:
Last year saw the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Summer Book. Bookshop.org celebrated by interviewing Sophia Jansson, niece of Tove Jansson and inspiration for The Summer Book’s granddaughter:
I thoroughly enjoy
’s Substack A Narrative Of Their Own. She always discusses books and authors I enjoy—so it was a delight to see her diving deep into The Summer Book a few months ago:
Lovely to see you back Claire.m 💕 You’ve chosen beautiful quotes to reflect the transition between seasons, and I think the Summer Book quote is especially pertinent for you right now. The stars are always there; you just can’t see them yet in the darkness. But the night air will soon cool, everything will come into sharp focus and then there will be stars galore. You are a brilliant North Star for your girl xx
I read The Offing for the first time this summer and I can’t stop thinking about it. Such a very old-feeling, resonant story.
I am also in the discomfort of transition stage in my life at the moment so I’m with you in that the change itself is probably good and needed, but the transition is awful 😅
Having said that, I love the change between seasons. ♥️ Perhaps because it’s cyclical so I know it won’t last forever?