Harmon's Histories: Autumn in Montana fills days with sunshine, poetry … and naps

By Jim Harmon

Autumn is my favorite season, except . . .

Except for what follows: WINTER!

Wouldn’t it be splendid if fall lasted a full six months, then transitioned effortlessly into spring?

The poets know of what I speak.

Julie L. O’Connor’s “The Artistry Of Nature: A Poem On The Colors Of Fall” best sums it up for me:

“There’s a crispness in the air that greets the morning sun,
a feeling of anticipation, a new day has begun.
Harvest days are ending, winter is drawing near,
yet in between is surely the most special time of year.”

John Keats’ love letter “To Autumn” is another nod to the best season of the year:

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run.”

What a wonderful description of the season: “the maturing sun.”

The angle of the sun is best in autumn, warm yet not hot. I could stretch out in a lawn chair and spend every fall afternoon in the sun.

Then there’s Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73:

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

In fall, Shakespeare saw a reflection of himself – no longer a “fair youth.”

“You can see in me a reflection of the autumnal and wintry time of year, when yellow leaves, or none, or few, hang upon the trees; the branches of such trees are like the choirs in monasteries, since they were once home to ‘sweet birds’ who sang, but are now bare.”

As I am but a couple of years short of four score, I can relate.

Carl Sandburg’s “Theme in Yellow” captures well the sense of autumn, with a sense of humor, assuming the body of a pumpkin:

“I spot the hills with yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October, when dusk is fallen,
Children join hands, and circle round me
Singing ghost songs, and love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o’-lantern, With terrible teeth
And the children know I am fooling.”

I suspect poet Robert Gibb, like me, enjoyed sitting in a lawn chair every fall afternoon, soaking in the southern sun, writing “For the Chipmunk in My Yard:”

“I think he knows I’m alive, having come down
The three steps of the back porch
And given me a good once over.”

Ah, yes . . . autumn is such a wonderful time.

Given the season that follows, I’ll soon be in my cozy cave, hibernating, except when my lovely wife awakens me – but just long enough to send in my column.

Jim Harmon is a longtime Missoula news broadcaster, now retired, who writes a weekly history column for Missoula Current. You can contact Jim at fuzzyfossil187@gmail.com. His best-selling book, “The Sneakin’est Man That Ever Was,” a collection of 46 vignettes of Western Montana history, is available at harmonshistories.com.