There will be time

When I read The Seven Storey Mountain a few years ago, I was immediately struck by this passage (which, albeit is very trivial in the terms of the entire book). Merton put into words this energy that I have felt every autumn, doubly so since starting college. Every change in season brings new energy and each is distinctive in how it feels. I write this on a warm February day, which makes everyone anxious for when spring truly comes around. Spring brings freedom from indoor cocoons and the desire to explore community once again. You cannot tie students down to their textbooks even if you wanted to. I think the change from spring to summer is less obvious, yet suddenly you’re there. Summer is hot and energetic, but the exhaustion from heat also comes from adrenaline and working up a day’s sweat. The change to winter, especially with Christmas starting off the season, is the feeling of love and beauty. We wish for snow, a warm cup of coffee, and a hug from our loved ones. It is introspective, causing you to cherish the things immediately around you that will carry you through the harsh icy months ahead.

But fall is hard to put a finger on. It is not the beginning of the semester, as we’ve already been at school for more than a month. But it almost feels as if it is. Students are enjoying equal amounts of the outdoors, with scenic autumnal hikes, and the academic interior, with very few seats in the library vacant. Whereas spring’s blossoming makes it hard to focus with Mother Nature distracting you through the window, fall propels you into study. It’s hard to put a finger on why that is. With beautiful foliage changing before our eyes, especially with the scenic backdrop of the Mount, shouldn’t we long to be soaking in the few moments of autumnal beauty we get each year?

But in that way, it is dangerous like Merton states. Frost, in the same way, has valid fear for it going too fast. Autumn is restless. I think that is the only way to describe it. We dip into colder temperatures, the leaves begin to change colors, and the wind starts to nip a little when it blows. Then suddenly, the branches are bare, and sidewalks are covered with decomposing leaves without the bright hues we loved temporarily. Perhaps this Fall feeling of sudden change and temporariness is what propels students into academia. We know we are on the verge of something new, such as a semester of courses to broaden our horizons, and we’re excited to get into it. But yet, we know that it will end and change, just as fall will turn to winter. These months of study will disappear into grades and job applications after graduation. Watching my three older siblings grow up, my mom always repeated the mantra, "High school is the greatest four years of your life, but college is the fastest four years of your life." It is true that college is faster paced than I imagined, and I’m not sure if there is anything else with that same hyperactive atmosphere. So, perhaps, Merton is simply noticing the fastest month of the fastest years of a person’s life.

However, Frost sees it too. Instead of relishing in it, he asks the season (and the reader) to slow down. He doesn’t remark the season as being full of new opportunities but of holding inevitable death. In the last quatrain of the poem, he highlights how the change to colder temperatures will bring death to crops, specifically grapes. He asks us to pause, if not for us, for the grapes that are not ready to die. The poem’s meaning mimics Frost’s own life; in a time period where urbanization was up-and-coming, Frost retreated to the countryside, devoted to a pastoral life of beauty and literature. In a similar way, so did Merton, who became a contemplative monk after his fast-paced college experience.

I find it so interesting that Frost and Merton both chose October to signify this season. Somehow, September is too summery, and November is too wintery, and I have to agree with both of them. American Octobers are a uniquely separate month, with restlessness infused in its existence. I cannot help but wonder if it is because it sits between two distinct seasons and makes up its own distinct season itself. Summer and winter are extremes, but fall doesn’t truly belong to either. Yet spring feels like a natural transition into summer, with the world awakening from hibernation. Fall is one rapid change after another with a period in between that we don’t truly get to experience before it disappears again. I wonder if it is this quick death, growth, and subsequent death that gives October its restlessness.

Regardless, October seems to have always been, and will continue to be, a month of high energy, drive, and rapid growth before decay. Frost and Merton recorded this on paper, which I have only pondered about in my head without the right vocabulary. I have to assume that other Americans feel it too and can add to this discussion of the dangerous month of October.