It started a little over a month ago.

Actually, if I’m completely honest, it never started at all. The cycle of life is an ongoing thing—it’s just a question of which details are noticed and how we fit them into our personal framework.

I do a lot of walking around London, and as such, my eyes spend plenty of time recording bits of tree matter that have been given up to the ground beneath my feet. At the midpoint of summer, I was walking home wearing only a sundress and noticed that many bright green helicopter seedlings had started to populate the sidewalk. Their vibrancy made me think that it was far too early for them to have fallen away. Their presence was the first reminder that this warm summer weather wouldn’t last.

And as the weeks have progressed, acorns and chestnuts seeds have also gathered in the ridges and angles of the roadways and curbsides. Unlike the little helicopters, these are decidedly more mature in their hard, brown shells. They are dried out and ready to supply the earth with nature decrees they must in preparation for the next generation of life.

Today I awoke to an early start of rain and extended darkness. I caught my train, and exited the subway station to discover that I was treading sidewalks filled with even more fossilized tree matter. You could no longer deny that Mother Nature was applying her autumn layer of evidence across every horizontal. As I held my umbrella aloft and moved quickly down the street, I understood that soon all the branches would be hanging bare. The end of a decidedly long and welcoming summer season had been achieved.

But it’s not my intention to write a brooding dissection on seasonal transition and the bracing for protracted desolation. The shorter days and the departure of foliage doesn’t signal death in the slightest; intellectually, I understand this. I know that this marks a renewed starting point of unseen incubation—and while time does its thing, the rest of us, the acutely sentient beings, are subjected to a waiting game of sorts. Spring’s grand reveal looms far out on the distant horizon. Most of our planning diaries don’t yet reach out that far.

This is where I kind of have trouble with the start of the fall season.

Sometimes I think that it would be much easier if I were one of those anonymous trees lining the streets—rather than one of the many anonymous Londoners rushing about to Whatever Is Next. If I were anchored to the ground, with no control or remorse for the ephemeral nature of my budding branches, then I think that life could be so much more freeing. It would be easier to embrace the statement “right now, it’s like this” because there would no choice. Right now it’s just autumn, and it’s rather dull. And I’m just a tree, living season to season. There would be no scowling at unwelcoming weather. No disdain at moving from point A to point B while the impolite north winds blow my umbrella inside out.

And must like the close of this year’s generously long summer days, there are other parts of my life right now that I don’t particularly enjoy. But much like Mother Nature’s more fibrous citizens, these are circumstances that I can’t much control. I might be able to move around, but ultimately I remain an observer. I mark the more obvious transitions as I see them. I do it while checking the clock, checking the calendar.

It’s useless to spend my time wishing I were a tree—just as I know that it would be foolish to wish for a time machine that would speed along the lulls of fall and winter. As ever, I strive to learn to appreciate how things are right now, and remember that there are still many bright spots throughout. Off the top of my head, I remember the smell of chimney smoke that warms you inside, even while the frosty air is biting at the top of your knuckles. There’s the first drop of a vulcanized rubber puck that signals the start of an ice hockey game. There’s the waking up to a morning where everything—to include those bare spindly tree branches—everything is covered in quiet snow. These things, and more—they too, have their place.

Of course all of this Currier and Ives stuff is easy to fantasize about, especially now while mid-September still has the feel of a glossy photograph. As life goes further underground, and we will all pile on unattractive outer layers, and life will feel a bit more tired. More matte in finish. The sidewalks will start to ice over, and invariably, I’ll wonder if this is the year where I go sliding and commence with old person concerns like suffering injured hips and knees. Such is the cycle of life.  I can’t really control all of it, but I suppose, like the trees, I’m here to see how it all goes.