Gold in the Dark
helping summer-sad friends with October
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This one’s for my friends who struggle when summer is over.
Although to me, October seems inarguably the best month out of the twelve, there are some people who struggle with the entire concept of fall. Several close friends fall in this category; a couple of my sisters; my husband. This entertains me because Andrew’s birthday is October 30th, and as someone who adores my own birthday, I’d think it would be his favorite. I would happily swap my swampy, midsummer birthday for his October birthday, but I suppose we individually needed something to look forward to. Me, in midsummer when I struggle, Andrew, in fall.
People have multiple reasons to dislike autumn, and some of them aren’t as simple as “It’s just not my thing.” Seasonal Affective Disorder is an issue that needs more than a rebrand of your least favorite season to help, and there are some things (like long daylight) that we have to leave behind in August.
But we can’t skip the hard parts. I can’t skip August and you can’t skip October.
I wish we could.
My gosh, I wish we could. Or I used to wish we could.
At this point in my life I’m starting to think that skipping the hard parts means under-appreciating the good parts that come after, and missing the chance to look for the hidden treasure in the hard part itself while it lasts.
I know that we can seek beauty anywhere, even if we need help doing so. I know this because friends have helped me look for beautiful things on gray beach days (like seashells) and in summer (like endless peaches), and in waiting (like hope). It can be done. We can beautify the ugly bits and make them more bearable for ourselves. That is within our power. In fact, that’s a task we are invited to do, that only we can do. Each of us hunting for our own gold in the dark.
So, October.
I don’t think kitschy lists of fun fall activities are really what people need when they are struggling to find the beauty in a season that hurts. What I want to offer is a little more broad in its scope and, hopefully, a little more helpful if you find yourself struggling to exit summertime, mourning the loss of daylight. May I share October with you, and some beautiful things that belong to this month alone?
Being outdoors is more accessible and comfortable!
Nothing makes me feel more alive than spending time out in nature, and I often seek a few hours outside if I find myself feeling out of whack and disjointed from the things that make me come alive. There are documented, positive effects to experiencing fresh air, movement, and sunlight, and fall makes these more accessible than nearly any other season. Cool nights, warm (but not humid) days, some really insane sunsets as the atmosphere clears and storms are less frequent.
Summertime is great for long days and the ability to jump in the ocean without shivering afterward, but otherwise it is really not the most enjoyable season outdoors. I think we were conditioned to feel like we had to like summer because all through our youth, summer was our only extended, multiple-week free time. But it’s really not that fabulous in its details. For one thing, the sweat. Snakes, bugs, and mosquitoes proliferate. The sun is either boiling you alive (temperature-wise) or giving you carcinoma. You have to remember sunscreen, which is just a killjoy. It’s easy to get dehydrated and discouraged and wish you’d never started this hike through a tunnel of knock-kneed bald cypress trees.
I recently talked with a friend who Goes Camping, and shared how the majority of my own camping experience has been summertime camping as a kid. This type of camping mostly involved fishing for clams in the Currituck Sound with my toes as we crouched in brackish water and avoided submerged tree roots, occasionally slicing the pads of our feet on errant clamshells. Summer camping involved giant mosquitoes, violent squalls causing us to wake up with puddles around our sleeping bags or tents somersaulting into the woods. It was full of visits to the camp store for sour candy, lounging in hammocks, or creeping past silent guinea pig-like nutrias stolidly munching cattails in the beams of our flashlights as we clung to my mom and tiptoed to the bathhouse. We loved it, of course, but now I realize that summer camping was, in short, not the Ideal Time to be pitching tents and starting fires and roasting the odd marshmallow with nine children in tow.
“Yeah,” this friend apologetically offered at the end of the diatribe I’d trapped him in: “Summer is not the time you want to be camping.”
But autumn is another story entirely. Breezes return - do you remember breezes? Divine things. They ruffle your hair, and the leaves, and the tiny hairs on your knee that you missed when you shaved your legs at five-thirty in the morning before work. They feel companionable. In fall, the sunlight lies just warmly enough across your shoulders to feel like a jacket (when you inevitably forget your jacket). You are sometimes lucky enough to notice that the non-descript tree at the bus stop has started to turn red from the top-down like it’s being dip-dyed in beet juice.
Everything looks better in fall. Ditches that had been full of vines and weeds all summer are riots of gold, bronze, ruddy brown, and purples. The least interesting trees are wearing intense colors and the evergreens - pines, cedars, and the like - sketch themselves starkly into the landscape: pillars of dark green and blue framed by Octobering.
You can walk for miles and not break a sweat.
You find interesting seed pods and nuts.
Sometimes you stumble upon a persimmon tree: all dark green leaves and almost artificially-orange, globelike fruits getting brighter and brighter with every frost till it looks hung with party lanterns.
This brings me to another particularly lovely thing about October:
Candles, lanterns, and lights.
Although people bemoan the lack of sunlight in autumn, here is a secret: darkness shows off the light that remains. In one of my recent reads, the author wrote something profound about artists: he said that artists don’t learn how to draw, they relearn how to see. That concept struck me. An artist isn’t someone who knows how to draw a good chair. An artist is someone who sees the white of the chair legs and the blue and gray and black of the shadows in between, who paints all those colors as he sees them and then and steps back to see a full image, complete.
Befriending darkness is a bit that way; learning to appreciate it as a color, not a foil to color.
Dusky darkness is the perfect backdrop to golden lights. I never feel the impulse to burn candles more than I do in autumn. I don’t even care about scented candles, although you’re certainly allowed to like those. In Norfolk we have a little shop of French imports which I love to wander through. I can afford almost nothing within the shop except their taper candles, which are the fancy kind that come together on the same wick and require snipping apart before using. I like to buy a new set once or twice a year. On my mantelpiece right now are two amber candlesticks holding auburn tapers. I haven’t burned them yet because they look so nice unused, but I likely will before the season is out. Earlier darkness brings an invitation to brighten the corners with a candle, or twinkle lights. There is nothing cozier, nothing more like home than a candle flame dancing in the dark.
Two weeks ago we had our very first fire of the season. A fire in a fireplace or woodstove is eighty percent sure to cure the blues, and I’ve never been sad next to a bonfire. Time runs deliciously slow as you watch the logs crumble into red coals and give it an occasional poke with a long stick. A roasted marshmallow is always a fun time. If you don’t have access to fireplaces, wood stoves, or bonfires, I have definitely roasted a marshmallow over a gas stove a la Rory Gilmore, and even over a candle flame (make sure it isn’t scented). This is also the time of year when Netflix puts its “fireplace ambiance” videos up for the season. If you can’t find any other form of flame, this film version can help you befriend the dark. Put on cozy socks, curl up on the couch, and watch the fire burn lower as you get sleepier and sleepier. Feeling sleepy (and being able to soon after roll into bed) is a delight we typically undervalue. I have rediscovered it lately, and it is the cream of the crop of small luxuries. Try it sometime!
Cozy foods abound in October.
I know that not everyone is a soup person, but it must be said that soup season is upon us and for many, this is a deeply comforting thing. The ability to affordably make a large, simmering cauldron of nourishment and to have it feed you past tonight is something special that soup offers. Leftovers for the week, or something to freeze and access later when you’re tired and weary and don’t feel like cooking for yourself, soup has your back. And not just soup. Autumn is the time for a lot of cozy foods. Sweet potatoes are in season, along with squash and beets and leafy greens and apples. The most loaded, delicious harvest salads come out of my kitchen this time of year, and they’re more filling than those I make in summer. They’re anchored with pecans or pepitas, often scattered with whole grains like quinoa or farro, always served with some maple and mustard vinaigrette. I sometimes feel unmotivated by produce in the fall, and then I remember that there are some truly delicious things that are only available to us in October and my kitchen inspiration rallies. Mushrooms! Oysters! Wild rice! Pomegranates!
You can drink spiced cider (and spike it if you want to).
You can eat cinnamon sugar doughnuts from an orchard.
You can roast a chicken or (if that feels unattainable for your autumn spirits we are working on lifting), you can make a favorite casserole. I know we like to hate casseroles, but I bet we can each name one that we sometimes crave. For me, it's the “chicken and wild rice” casserole we used to make when I was a kid with its cheesy topping and crunchy water chestnuts inside. I haven’t made it in a thousand years, but I still think about it.
Autumn is a time for cozy foods but it’s also a time for cozy clothing.
I think that summer challenges a lot of us in our body image. I have been grateful that the past several summers have not come with giant shifts in my self esteem when I shed layers and show up with a lot of myself on display for the summer. However, cocooning myself in a cozy sweater and jeans is a personal favorite way to show up to the world. And by October the weather is finally (mostly) appropriate for wearing something other than bike shorts and sports bra.
I like dressing cozy. Not because it covers more of my body but because it’s comfortable, cute, and requires no prep (like shaving my legs in the shower at five thirty in the morning, as afore-stated). But yes, it must be admitted, not having to challenge your body-image on a poor body-image day is easier in the cozy weather season than it is in swimsuit season. And there is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes we need to wear a tank top, and sometimes we need to wear a sweatshirt and joggers. It’s not a cop-out, it’s a coziness break. Nobody can make you take the break, but taking it is good for the soul.
Here is a fun thing to do in October: find something you enjoy wearing and dress like an illustration for the day. I am not an illustrator but I do love looking at children’s books, which is something I get to do a lot in my day job. As a kid, I loved to draw and would design imaginary outfits that I wanted to just wish into being. Nowadays I often see strangers with good street style and think how much I’d like to see them as a children’s book illustration.
Working off what’s in my closet right now, my version of this outfit would be a pair of relaxed fit jeans, a bulky sweater, fun earrings, and heeled booties. A beanie if I felt like it. My leopard coat if a bitter wind struck up. It goes down to my calves and feels very mob-boss-wife, but in a friendly way. Like if the mob boss’s wife baked gingersnaps for neighborhood children and funded a mobile library and was really into Grace Kelly movies.
It’s hard to have the blues when you’re dressed like a children’s book illustration. Mainly because it’s fun to wonder who would illustrate you, and what the plot of the book would be. Robert McCloskey would be amazing, but I really think I’m more of a Phoebe Wahl (also acceptable). Andrew would be illustrated by whomever animated Disney’s 101 Dalmatians.
So, October.
I know that any amount of little tricks won’t change the way you really feel about a season that is hard for you, just as no number of farmers markets and beach days will convince me that midsummer in the South isn’t a blight on my otherwise altogether pleasant life. However, I do hope that you will know that there is treasure to be dug up in this darkness, beauty available for the beauty-curious who think that maybe - just maybe - October can be something more than villainous. We are here for you, pulling you toward the light when you feel swamped by the dark. We will make you soup. We will toast you a marshmallow. Hang in there, my summertime friends.