The Gifts of Fall

October 7, 2021

The brilliant crimson-red berry clusters of the Mountain Ash hang in contrast to her masses of green and yellow leaves. The leaves are like a watercolour painting, yellow bleeding into green, red emerging, a new painting each day as the cool nights enrich the palette. This splendid medley of the colours in my front yard reminds me that Autumn has come, a time of fast and intense change, a final majestic display before the quiet slumber of winter with its protective blanket of snow.

As Adrienne Maree Brown so poignantly writes in Emergent Strategy (2017), “Change is divine and constant” (p. 56). The spectacular changes of Autumn are a reminder that nature is in a perpetual state of change; reoccurring cycles of growth, splendor, decline, and rest. How different this is from our western socio-economic system with its perpetual pursuit of growth, taking without concern for rest or replenishing. How did we become so disconnected from the very ecosystems that sustain us and of which we are a part of? How do we rebuild connection?

In Returning the Gift, Robin Wall Kimmerer (2014) reminds us of the importance of paying attention as an “ongoing act of reciprocity” (par. 17). Paying attention to the natural world sharpens my seeing and connection to the gifts that surround me. It reminds me of the incredible beauty of Earth, how infinitely interconnected all of life is, and how blessed I am to be sustained by the abundance of nature every day. This gives me a clarity of purpose in the caring for these gifts that sustain life on Earth, it shapes me. Paying attention also reminds me that change is always occurring providing fresh perspective on the changes in my life. Perhaps paying attention can also offer fresh perspective on our response to the rapid pace and scale of climate change and biodiversity loss.  

In her TED Talk, The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it, climate scientist Katherine Heyhoe (2019) underscores that the foremost thing we need to do is to talk about climate change and that this conversation must start with finding common values and things we care about. Hodson (2019) also affirms the importance of “attitudes, emotions, norms and values” (p. 2) in shaping beliefs about climate change information. Regardless of our socio-political views, we are all moved by the spectacular beauty of Autumn. Near where I live, tens of thousands of people go to the mountains each fall to view the larch forests turning yellow, setting the mountain side ablaze in colour. In my neighbourhood people walk more in Autumn and we stop to chat about how beautiful the colours are. Can this shared value of love for our natural environment provide an antidote to depolarize climate conversations? Can talking about what we love provide connection and an entry point for working together to protect what we love?

This Fall I am intentionally creating space is my daily conversations to pause and comment on the gifts of Autumn. My observation is that this sparks an immediate shared moment of gratitude, a moment of emotional connection. It also changes how we talk and what we talk about. I am learning a little more about people and what they care about. I find myself reflecting again on the power of nature’s beauty as a starting point for finding connection with one another through sharing stories about what we love and for initiating a conversation about the intensity of changes underway in our environment. In her ecological model for climate communications, Hodson (2019) highlights the importance of allies in climate communications for reaching broader audiences, increasing influence and building trust (p. 9). This leads me to ponder the role of nature herself in telling the story of climate change; perhaps she is our most powerful ally.  

Here again, the poetic words of Robin Wall Kimmerer (2014) from her essay Returning the Gift offer wise council:

Paying attention to the more-than-human world doesn’t lead only to amazement; it leads also to acknowledgment of pain. Open and attentive, we see and feel equally the beauty and the wounds, the old growth and the clear-cut, the mountain and the mine. Paying attention to suffering sharpens our ability to respond. To be responsible.

This, too, is a gift, for when we fall in love with the living world, we cannot be bystanders to its destruction. Attention becomes intention, which coalesces itself to action. (pars. 17 and 18)

Fall has come and great change is also upon us. What can paying attention teach us about building connection with others and about vulnerability and resilience in the face of the profound change? 

References

Brown, A.M. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. AK Press. 2017.

Hodson, J. (2019). “An ecological model of climate marketing: A conceptual framework for understanding climate science related attitude and behavior change.” Cogent Social Sciences 5(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2019.1625101. Accessed 7, October 2021.

Heyhoe, Katherine. (2019). “The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it.” YouTube, uploaded by TED, 11 January 2019, , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BvcToPZCLI&t=14s.

Kimmerer, R. W. (2014). “Returning the Gift.” Center for Humans and Nature. Minding Nature: Spring 2014, Volume 7, Number 2 https://www.humansandnature.org/returning-the-gift-article-177.php. Accessed 7, October 2021.