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“Autumn is a second spring, when every leaf is a flower.” Albert Camus

Up in the mountains, the aspen have long since turned, and with this week’s snowfall, the last few hardy leaves are likely all on the ground.

But there’s still time to enjoy beautiful fall foliage along the Front Range.















More than other seasons, perhaps, fall leads us to reflect, to take stock of where we are in our journey through life. Summer’s blossoms are gone, our garden harvest is over, or almost so, and the trees are shedding their leaves. These changes in the natural world around us stimulate us to think of those who are no longer with us, and of our own mortality. Such reflections can take many forms.

Perhaps we feel the sharp pain of the loss of a loved one. We may feel alone. But if we look at fall more closely, we see that the autumnal changes in nature are not an end. Instead, they are just a part of the cycle of life. This year’s leaves began as sunlight, carbon dioxide, water, and perhaps a few minerals from the soil.




As the leaves decompose, they become nutrients for next year’s growth, or the year after that. Where there was a flower is now a seed, waiting for the wind to transport it to a patch of dirt where it will start a new life.

Trees use the carbon dioxide you exhale to make their leaves. You breathe the oxygen the trees produce. You — me — we all are inextricably entwined with the rest of creation. Recognizing this physical fact — that there’s a whole lotta recycling going on, all the time — may help us to deal with feelings of loneliness or isolation.




Sharon Salzburg writes in her book Lovingkindness: “What would we fear if we experienced ourselves to be part of the whole of nature, moving and changing, being born and dying? We would then see that our bodies are joined with the planet in a continual, rhythmic exchange as matter and energy flow back and forth between ourselves and the environment. This is breathing. With each breath, we exchange carbon dioxide from within us for oxygen outside us. Normally we take this process for granted, but this exchange, this connection that is going on every moment, is actually the experience of being alive. We do not live as isolated fragments, completely separate, but as parts of a great, dynamic, mutable whole.”