A Deep River Year - 2017

Orange is all around now. Up at the orchard on top of the hill, a swath of pumpkins awaits children looking for just the right one for their Halloween jack-o-lanterns. The grocery store has them lined up in tiers by the parking lot, the number diminishing by the day. This year I have noticed an increase in other options: I've seen quite a few white pumpkins, and even some in blues and pinks. And some are oddly shaped, like warty beasts or curved-neck swans. But nothing can outdo the classic bright orange pumpkins decking the porches and front steps up and down our small town streets.

Those pumpkins accentuate the color magic that is taking place on our hillsides. This year, it seems, the show is a little more mottled than usual. The wind has stripped our big maples of many of their leaves which are falling brown onto the ground. But there is hope, still, for the occasional trees standing like a burning bush, sentinels of joy in the failing light of autumn. Colors elicit emotions. Orange is like a fire, a sign of energy and life. I've heard that restaurants often color their interiors with shades of orange, because it is said to increase people's appetites. And surely, as the days grow cooler, we feel energy rising in us to play among the falling leaves, to do the necessary cleanup of our yards and gardens, to walk in the woods, and feel our appetites increase. Bring on the cider and apple pie!

One fall day decades ago, a number of students were invited to the country cabin of then Yale professor Roland Bainton, a small, bespectacled historian with a wild shock of white hair. That day he stood out on the hill overlooking the Housatonic River, knee deep in golden and orange leaves. Someone commented that autumn was such a sad time, with everything dying down for winter. Bainton, an old man himself, smiled and raised his hands to the sky. "Oh, but what a way to go," he cried. What energy! What appetite!

Orange

Autumn is orange,
as maples on a thousand hills
blaze toward their winter rest.
At roadside stands, fat pumpkins shine,
ready to be turned into grinning lanterns
lighting up welcoming porches
through crackling, frosty nights.
And aged oak and birch
burn bright in the hearth,
their orange fires dwindling to glowing embers
as love sits by and smiles.
This color is life's hue in a dying hour,
a flame painting joy on the world
before the dull, dark days to come.
Orange is a strong color, but not my best.
I am home, most truly, in summer's green,
or even where the cloudless sky
turns the flowing water blue as hope.
But let there be some orange in me
these tender days,
so that I may leap and blaze,
so that I, too, may be a little fire
in the night.

--Timothy Haut