Falling Leaves

Originally published in The Laconia Daily Sun ›

Thinking about the change of seasons last weekend my mind drifted to drawing. If you have had the experience of drawing from a live model you know there are long poses and short poses. During the long pose, usually twenty to thirty minutes, there is time to study the figure and contemplate the composition. Later as you begin to draw you can work on the shadows and add in highlights. When the session ends the model pulls on a robe, takes time to stretch and returns, perhaps for another long pose, assuming a completely different position. The light has shifted and the way you compose the drawing is different.

So, it is as we shift from summer into the autumn season. First there are the short poses, when the days begin to seem shorter and the temperature begins to dip a few degrees. We move indoors. We pull on a sweater. Our diet, fresh summer berries, tomatoes, green beans just picked from the vine, changes and is replaced with winter vegetables. Pumpkin and apple pies instead of freshly picked blueberry and raspberry pies. As the ground temperature cools, we begin to think about planting tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and crocus bulbs so they can winter over and bloom in the spring. The wildflowers and flowers from our gardens that have made beautiful bouquets are replaced with dried flowers and branches.

As we move indoors this year it will be different, because we cannot gather in large groups. This means being more creative, perhaps finding the shadows that we have overlooked. The Currier Museum of Art in Manchester is open and is celebrating the art and life of Maud Briggs Knowlton, the Currier’s first director (1929–1946) and a lifelong resident Manchester, New Hampshire resident with deep ties to Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine. The fall is a lovely time to visit art galleries.

The Belknap Mill is developing programs for the fall season and is offering online programming. If you haven’t walked through downtown this summer there are new shops, including an eyeglass shop, Spyglass Eyewear, with frames that are so tempting and stylish, you will want to own a pair, even if you don’t really need a new pair of glasses. If you haven’t been to Trillium, the new farm to table restaurant on Canal Street you are in for a dining treat. There are still a few months when you can dine in their garden.

Probably one of the reasons I love New Hampshire is because we can experience the four seasons in their full glory. How I love kicking leaves down the sidewalk, pressing colored leaves in waxed paper, making wreaths with bittersweet and wearing corduroy and sweaters. Until we are on the cusp of winter. I love the silence of the white landscape after a snow. When the crocus’ start pushing through the ground I fall in love with spring. Life follows the cycle of nature and “There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.” — Zora Neale Huston