It’s funny how much a snowfall can change everything.

All Fall I’ve been slowly grieving the end of summer. As the days got shorter, the nights cooler, the landscape shifting into sepias, you could almost hear the wailing nooooo! coming from deep inside me.

So you’d think when I woke up to snow this morning it would be the last devastating blow to my clinging to summer. Not so. I was really excited, thought everything was fluffy and beautiful. Even in the throws of a headcold I got out my snowboots and toque and headed out for an adventure down along the escarpment – including using my squishy corduroy backside to slow my sliding down the ravine I had to descend to retrieve the sunglasses I’d dropped (same philosophy as snow tires: something softer, wider surface area, better traction than just my boots).

The light filtering through the trees, thin and horizontal even in the mid afternoon, had up ’til today seemed like a disappointment, a failure to be summery and warming and strong. Through the leafless trees, glinting off the snow, it finally seemed somehow right. That slow decline I’d been railing against all Fall wasn’t the end of Summer, it was the start of winter.

And I realized as I walked back to my car, that’s running a parallel with my life. An inability to let go and accept a dormancy, a period of darkness. I’ve been clinging to a summer that’s long past, a period of bright activity and lush growth that has already moved into something else, whether I thought it should or not.

It’s not been a peaceful Autumn in my soul. But waking up to winter, metaphorically as well as meteorologically, is gonna help.