Nothing Gold Can Stay

.You might know the poem by Robert Frost, entitled Nothing Gold Can Stay. You're more likely to know it if you ever read the book The Outsiders in school. It's a beautiful short poem...

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sinks to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay. 

I think about it every year at this time. When the trees are golden hues, and slowly begin to shed their leaves. You see, autumn is my favorite season, once it is upon us. Three seasons a year, I dream of or delight in summer. I look forward to summer, and relish every blisteringly hot day, and then as it fades out, I declare autumn my favorite.

But you see, the beauty of autumn lies in its temporary state. Autumn is a warning, a promise, a delicious taste of a terrible pie. Autumn is a slow goodbye to wonderful times, and a slow fade into dark days ahead. It is like the sign on the side of the highway that says what is coming ahead. It's a sweet sign, you appreciate it, you relish in its beauty, but that doesn't mean you want what is coming.

Sure, autumn is beautiful, especially around here. Saskatchewan is the land of living skies, but also of drastic weather. We go from 40 above everyday to 40 below everyday (Celsius) in the matter of autumn. But the living skies, those bring autumn to life. Imagine. Wide open bright blue skies framed by never-ending golden brown fields of harvested wheat, and yellow and orange trees on either side. Or rolling clouds across summer skies, that you can just see through gold and green leaves. Rows of trees, lining farms, that vary from live green to yellow, gold to dead brown branches. These months are truly Saskatchewan at its finest.

Even the thermometers seem to know that it is a transition phase. You start your morning with the heat on, by lunch you have the air off and the windows open (to enjoy that crisp, fresh, grain dust seasoned air) and then by three you have A/C on and that fall sweater/jacket/coat sits on your passenger seat.

For work lately, I find myself driving around the edges of town, where residential becomes industrial, and then turns into acreages (small town, much?). That is where the beauty lies. I mean, this town is old. Half of it was built a hundred years ago, when every street was tree-lined, and the trees are mature now. Driving down any of the older residential streets is a beauty in autumn. Indescribable temporary beauty. But the edges of town, where railroads, fields and dirt roads stretch into the horizon? That is where autumn comes to life. And what makes it more beautiful is this. I often drive through the same areas several days in a row, or at least a few days apart. And every time I drive through an area, I note the trees that are at perfection. The ones that drive the inner, pathetic photographer inside of me to pull out my imaginary DSLR and snap a bazillion pictures. Then I drive past that block a few days later, and that tree is dead. Previously green trees are gold, and previously gold trees are barren. It never fails to surprise me just how temporary autumn is.

Robert Frost truly says it best; Nothing gold can stay.

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