The trees know.

At the very end of September, I was in Western, NY, for my cousin’s beautiful wedding. The weather was gorgeous, and even in the warm sunny skies, I could see that the fall was just starting to turn a few leaves into the deep, rich colors of autumnal art. 

Which reminds me of one of the annual themes of fall: release. 

When trees prepare for winter, they don’t force anything. They don’t yank off their leaves in a panic when a certain date draws near. Instead, they respond to the quiet nudges from the earth by slowly forming an abscission, a separation layer of specialized cells at the base of each leaf.  As the weather cools, a cork-like material forms and plugs the tubes that carry food and water to the leaf from the tree. As those tubes get smaller and smaller, the pigment in the leaves changes, revealing the new autumn color underneath. Eventually, the top cells slowly disintegrate, creating a dotted tear line. As the wind blows, the leaves are gently released from the branch, falling to the ground, to insulate the roots as ground cover. 

The letting go isn’t abrupt or brutal; it is gentle and beautiful. 

The tree knows that to survive winter, it must conserve energy. If it kept feeding every leaf, it would lose what truly matters—its core, its roots, its life force.

And that, I think, is part of the invitation of October:
🍂To let go gently, not out of fear or scarcity, but out of deep knowing.

🍂To release what no longer nourishes us so we can feed what does.

🍂To draw our energy back toward our roots, and to tend to what is essential, often beneath the surface. 

As we enter the holiday season, we can become very focused on all the doing of this busy time of year. We want to do it all, so our list gets longer and longer. I know my own plate is beginning to overflow, and so it feels really important to be gentle and deliberate with deciding what we can release and what we need to tend. 

Where do I want to say yes, where do I need to say no? 

I’ll be practicing asking this question right alongside you. May October remind us that what we tend at the roots determines what blooms next spring.