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Listen to thisI love this time of the year. I love the change of the season. I love the smell of the air. In Calgary, where I live, you can see the mountains clearer for some reason in the fall (our name for autumn in North America). They loom so large on the western horizon. You can also smell the mountains. It must be the autumn winds blowing off the mountains but you really can smell them. I love the anticipation of the coming snow. Everything feels cleaner and fresher. It somehow to me feels like life. I suppose that this is one of the reasons why I also love Halloween because it is the celebration of the fall.
Most of us associate spring with new beginnings but for me it has also been the fall. I suppose this has to do with my years of connection with a school of some sort or the other. Looking back there have been only a few falls in my life where I haven’t been connected to a school. This has included my schooling as a child and also my time at college and university. It also includes the years I have spent teaching at college and university. There were also a few years in there where I worked in schools either in front-line or director level positions. I suppose after all these years one sort of school or another feels like home to me. There is a security for me in being connected with a school. This is a large part in why I love the fall because this time of the year is the beginning of the school year.
I also have always loved this time of the year because of the opportunities it provides for the young people we work with, at least in this country. Not for all of them, but for many of them. It is a time of new beginnings for many of them. A time to start anew. A chance to do things differently. The start of each new school year holds open the possibility for things to be different. It is an opportunity to let go of the past and try a different way of being. It is one of the few times in a year when one really has a chance to do this without taking too many risks.
Now I’m not saying that our young people all jump at the chance. Of course they don’t ,do they? I’m not saying that the system helps them take advantage of this moment because more often than not it doesn’t does it? I’m not saying that they don’t start the year frightened of what else could go wrong for them to join the long list of things that have already gone wrong in their lives. I know most of them don’t jump out of bed to rush off to school in the hope that life has suddenly changed for them. What I am saying, though, is that most of them can feel, for just a moment, the possibility of change in all the dread that they feel about school. It is because of this moment that I also love fall.
I’ve always been a sucker for the story of King Arthur and his Camelot. I’ve had times in my life when everything comes together for just that brief magical moment. That moment when anything is possible. That moment when life is perfectly glorious. For me these times are inevitably in the fall. I wish this for our kids. I wish that for at least a moment that life comes together for them “and it can because fall always holds the possibility of Camelot. That’s why I love the fall.
