Chilly and gloomy it may be, but this is the most inspirational time of the year
From our glorious golden trees to birds fleeing the Arctic freeze, autumn and winter are all about the battle to survive
WE ARE who we are because of a wobble in space. I know that sounds like the beginning of a mad internet conspiracy theory, but it’s a matter of hard fact.The wobble, since you ask, is 22.5 degrees and it dictates the way we face the world.Autumn is finally here, winter will soon be upon us, the hours of darkness will increase – and then comes Christmas, and the days will start to get longer again. Not much later – though never quite quick enough – comes spring, the season of hope, to be followed by the glories of summer.
That all happens because the Earth wobbles in space as it makes its annual journey around the sun.The wobble makes for the seasons: when the top half of the Earth – the northern hemisphere – wobbles towards the sun, we have summer; when it wobbles away, we have winter.That oscillation dictates the rhythm of our lives: our knowledge that good times won’t last, but then nor will bad times.
We understand that still better when we look into the wildness of nature.The springtime of birdsong and arriving swallows gives way to the achievement of summer – and then to the changes of autumn and the toughness of winter.
We are inclined to see spring and summer as the time of life, autumn and winter as the seasons of death. “A sad tale’s best for winter,” says the heir to the throne in The Winter’s Tale. But is winter really so sad? There are days when the wrong side of the wobble can bring us some of the most glorious things in nature. Sometimes the dark months are the most inspiring of all.
That’s because autumn and winter are not really about death at all.True, spring and summer are all about new life: finding partners, making more life, raising young, and if all goes well, having the offspring in good shape for the annual crisis that comes after summer. In spring and summer the aim of everything that lives is to make more life. But when autumn comes around and leads on towards winter, the emphasis is rather different.
What matters is getting through: getting from one end of the tunnel of darkness to the light at the end of it, the spring and the warmth all over again.
IN OTHER words, autumn and winter are about Not Dying.That is the only job necessary for most of the things that live, birds, wasps, butterflies, mammals, trees, daisies and stinging nettles. There are many different strategies for this, and each one of them, in its different way, is something to wonder at.
And for humans there is joy and meaning to be found in these great struggles against death. For a start, it creates the great spectacle of golden trees. Right now all the deciduous trees in the country are changing colour before our eyes.
For them it’s a matter of simple economics.A tree can no longer afford to maintain its thousands of light-gathering devices, so it sacks the lot. First it withdraws the chlorophyll from the leaves, the stuff that allows the plant to make food from sunlight. It’s also the stuff that makes leaves green.When there is very little sunlight it makes no sense to hold on to the leaves: it’s
a waste of energy. So they turn yellow, brown and gold, and then they take to the air.
They land on the ground in great carpets, and children can shuffle through them playing trains. Here is a taste of nature that is not only available to all but exquisitely easy to enjoy: from trees in city centres and parks across the nation, as well as in farmed countryside and the wilder places.
For several million people, the easiest place to appreciate the turning of the leaves is Richmond Park to the west of London: open areas of grass with stands of mature trees, and all around herds of deer with very little dread of humans. Here, with parakeets screeching overhead, you have something most city-dwellers can only dream about.
We associate summer with swallows and swifts, birds that come flying up from Africa to enjoy the bounty of a northern hemisphere summer.
By autumn they have all gone.The British winter is death to a swallow – but it is life and hope to many other birds: and they come down from Scandinavia and from as far away as the Arctic to revel in our relatively balmy climate.
So look out for winter thrushes: especially fieldfares and redwings.They have escaped from the boreal chills to be with us throughout the cold months: you find them
in city parks as well as the open countryside. I have always believed that life is not just about being lucky, it’s about recognising your luck when it comes along.That holds true in a million occasions in human life: it’s essential for birds getting through the winter.
A nice, bright winter day is a stroke of luck: the best conditions for many species working on the grand project of Not Dying. It’s a day for the most energetic feeding.
You can see this best in a place with mature trees. For a while you see nothing, and then all at once you see everything: many birds busy feeding in the branches in a sprawling flock.
THE British winter is a severe testing ground: only the bestsuited and the luckiest individuals get through. It is a Darwinian proving-ground: a school of hard knocks in which the right strategy and the right attitude will prevail – if all goes well.
It sounds tough and it sounds bleak, and for the best of reasons, but as Darwin famously noted in the closing paragraphs of The Origin Of Species, “There is grandeur in this view of life”.And that grandeur is available to all of us with eyes and ears – and a warm garment or two.
It’s out there for you to appreciate and be enriched by.
Favourite tip of mine: Always keep a supermarket plastic bag in your coat pocket; that way you can sit dry-bummed wherever you roam, and by doing so, you can invite life to come to you.That way you can let it happen all around you and feel, at least for a while, as if you were no longer a mere observer but a participant in the great glories of autumn and winter in Britain.