Leaves have been bagged, and ripe wild figs are still falling, as the delighted birdsong reminds me, while the sun starts to set. It is a time of harvest, of course, of reward for making it through those most excessive days of heat (one of which was, er, yesterday). Yet here in the Cape, the equinox usually feels a bit premature. The wind blows the heat through us still on plenty of days; leaves are browned, burned at the edges, but dry; not easily seen yet as future humus. Rains are predicted and then evaporate from the charts. Easter’s still some way off. Sometimes the rain comes, as this year, auspiciously on the equinox itself. Other times it’s only at Easter that the welcome relief arrives. And sometimes it comes and then fizzles: who knows what this year’s winter will bring. We wonder, as the dam levels do their annual drop.
Easter, of course, is a remarkable time to look forward to; spring fertility baked into its name; its pagan origins shown up simply in its complex calculation: first Sunday after the first full moon after the solar equinox. Sun cycles and moon cycles feed into the celebration. This year we’ve also seen an autumn equinox during the latter part of Ramadan, which means that both Christians fasting for Lent and Muslims have been really quieting down in the South as this autumn time approaches, and as the moon wanes. That feels appropriate, for this equinox marks the inward turning moment. The slowing down, the looking into the mirror, the reflection in the stream. Perhaps that’s why we so long for the rain. A time for detox, release, letting go. I’ve just been invited to an Ayurvedic detox too, other traditions perhaps getting in on the act.
Here in the winter rainfall zones, it’s also got a more direct relationship to gratitude and regret. Part of our wondering is if we’ve partied a little too hard over the non-stop summer; and whether we’ll regret it over the months to come – whether the big rains we and the land are beginning to long for are going to show up this year, whether we’ve learned our lessons from the squirrels about preparing storage over the lean months, or whether another Day Zero might be on the not too distant horizon. And after the blaze, a looking back. Did we trample the soil too much this year, or did we tend it in its dryness? Is it ready to burst through, softened and renewed, rich in life forms, not stripped by neglect and chemicals? The days recently have seen the southeaster churning, the Cape Doctor pulling the pollution out for dispersal, the clean air one thing Capetonians like to pat themselves on the back for that has zero to do with wasteful humans and everything to do with the luck of the location. But the truth still comes in the clogged streams and the plastic debris on the beach after the spring tide. We are still just on the route to maturity, it seems, like other human communities.
Looking back, for me, is one of the two beats at the heart of autumn. An appreciation for what has been already, or at least an acknowledgement, of the kind that we didn’t find time for in the long hot days. So I remember childhood autumns, for example. My memories are full of big damp leaves, and chilly mornings in a northern latitude. Definitely not the peaches and mangoes at my local Cape market. This early autumn moment, and the harvest it comes with, allows a real look at the bounty in my life and the experiences that have numbered my days. Ripe avocados are just beginning to be sold once more at the traffic robots, the one thing we really have to give up for summer. In my first years here in my twenties I was astonished at the range of ‘in season’ local fruits available. Guavas are another treat to look forward to for the darker half of the year. Still, my memories of wet and cold Britain also feature a couple of weeks of annual fall berry hunting; and otherwise, russet apples (or other varieties), which were hoarded in great barns I visited as a child; or pears, like the inedible ones on the tree in our garden, that had to be boiled up for crumbles with lashings of sugar before they were palatable. Or sharp green gooseberries, very different to the sweet Cape ones that bear no relation (but currently sit in my garden, inside their little paper tents). Or medlars, which I can’t say fill me with longing; a weird British fruit that is only edible as it grows rotten, and is more a source of literary metaphor for ageing than something that actually tastes worthwhile: the thing that causes raised eyebrows by those in the know, when you’re told up there to just eat local, that far north, where oranges were once a Spanish oddity.
Or rhubarb, a strange red tartly sweet celery. Crumbles, impossible without sugar, are as much a childhood autumn memory for me as chestnuts. Or conkers, the inedible ‘horse chestnut’ version that we stringed as schoolboys, and then tried to break in single combat against another boy’s. Seriously strong ones might be ‘40ers’ that had outdone forty weaklings, perhaps fortified by such homespun boy recipes as soaking in vinegar; or perhaps they were just claimed as such by other boys seeking status. For me, however, the sweetest memory of conkers is more to do with how they were peeled open in the first place; a white fruit, that went brown on contact with the air, slowly but with a delicious rich tone emerging.
That delicious orange-brown is autumnal. So are these mornings at the beach, sunrises that come later and later with gorgeous tones to appreciate. And above all the harvest gratitude that comes with it. We gather the grapes we gather the grain hey ho! Hey ho! The peach and the pear and the berries ripe and rare, hey ho! Hey ho! Taking kids to pick grapes before a harvest festival, I recall seeing other sheddings beside the late sweet ones. Porcupine quills, a tender toughness needed to embrace the autumn and step consciously away from the rush. Autumn seems to tell us, inevitably, to take stock. The abundance is enormous. Our granadilla vine continues to regularly drop purple marvels wrinkling in the sun. Perhaps this time of my life, after a powerhouse few decades, is also time to take stock. This seems to be what this moment of natural equilibrium calls me for.
Of course, avoiding the political divisions and finding the roots that join us all is an essential balancing effort that this pause moment can bring us to. Here in South Africa it’s always pertinent as the autumn equinox usually falls on the Human Rights Day holiday, marking the Sharpeville massacre of anti-apartheid protesters back in 1960. The supreme autumn image is that of the tree, laden down, shedding fruits and nuts and leaves and still giving shade right now. Now, when it’s still needed on hot T-shirt afternoons, when the borehole has been the difference between life and death for some of the plants in the garden. (We look into the well in many a fairy tale; find strange things there that might lead us to unexpected future adventures. The well can be murky, which is also what this turning brings us to: trust the dark). Give away: let go. That’s the gesture of the tree. We can harvest because of this giveaway. Acknowledging when it’s time to let go is probably the ultimate lesson of this journey through life to death, that unique certainty. Often, in a healthy way, letting down and letting go is accompanied by tears; maybe we call so strongly for the rains now because we have so many unshed internal tears these days. Other societies are much better at grieving than ours, that denies the value of the letting go phase of life. Bringing attention to exactly what we’re letting go of is a vital piece of reclaiming this. Nine months ago, for instance, we were going into the heart of winter, and look what we’ve achieved, birthed, wrestled with since then. Another tree lesson is to look at those wrinkles and love them. Bark gets riddled with story-wrinkles. Marks of experiential maturity that take a certain kind of outbreath to acknowledge with a smile. Perhaps moreso for men, who lack wombs and the monthly experience of shedding.
Interestingly, of course, the animal process contrasts with the plants at this time. Creatures are growing coats, not shedding them, (contrasting with this time’s northern equinox - where spring sheep are being shorn and spring children are releasing thick coats for thinner ones). A counterweight to the falling leaves; extra layers on in the colder Cape mornings. And there’s the nesting material, dropped at our feet, ready for the upcoming hibernation. Recognising this too might help us reclaim the value of this quietening. Morning mists; magnificent as I drove over the mountains this morning. Nowhere near cold enough yet though for visible breath; the waterslides at the beach still enticing; ice cream shops still packed on the weekends, little boys biting into rock candy on the sand. Our fireplaces still sit, forgotten and unused, both the inside hearth and the outside bonfire pit. Tomatoes and squashes still mark out their territory, warmed by the days. But the cold is approaching, the turning is unstoppable. Best to go with it, relish it even as we make relishes from the falling crab apples.
With a little switch of focus, this animal-plant balance reminds us that besides the deliciousness we’re eating, produced from the harvest of past actions, there’s the deliciousness we can look forward to. The dark and the autumn brown has plenty of flavours on offer. All those forgotten items, hot water bottles; sitting composing at the piano, crafted a century ago, its frame made from some nut wood, another tree giving up its treasures. Decomposition is something I’m more into these days too. Over-screened little kids turned their noses up at getting hands ‘dirty’ in my gardening lessons once on a time, and I recognised perhaps a younger self. Nowadays I think nothing of getting hands into the grubs and the crap. There’s an acceptance that comes in my maturity, of what autumn has to offer. The microbial, the fungal, an unavoidable net catching out all who think they’re separate from the world. Perhaps I crack open a fermented kombucha or a stout, to wash down some sauerkraut. The medlars I once turned my nose up at might laugh, yeastily. Welcome to the reverse fecundity of the brown season. Chocolate eggs are a hilarious comment on it, without anyone in the north getting the joke yet. Maybe they will in six months time. For us down here, cosiness awaits.