An Ode to the Season That Leaves

I walk outside and feel the bite of the cold. The days are getting shorter, and I dig out my favorite jacket—brown wool, still hanging where I left it last March, a crumpled-up tissue in the pocket. I pull it on, and suddenly it’s my favorite time of year: fall.

Cambridge in the last weeks of September is magical—as I come off the hot days of summer, I remove my fan from the window, order ten boxes of my favorite black tea, and pull out my trusty black ankle boots.

Fall isn’t just the sad end of summer, though it does bring a small ache as I start to miss the comforts of home and brave the frightful New England weather. It’s not really about the leaves or the weather itself. Autumn is the season of change, and it makes you savor every moment. Through time spent with family and new friends, through the poems and movies that I read and watch in bed, I experience a slice of life back home.

Fall’s defining trait is that it cannot make up its mind: a warm afternoon after a rainy morning, a bluebird day that turns into a freezing night. You put on your flannel and start sweating ten minutes later—then you take it off, and your teeth start to chatter the moment you set foot outside.

And then comes the rain. It was only my second time using my umbrella since I arrived here, and I learned a hard lesson: Do not, under any circumstances, leave your umbrella outside your dorm room. It will be stolen, and you will be forced to walk through rain to buy an overpriced, cheaply made CVS umbrella.

By contrast, summer and winter are unchanging and relentless. Summer is a wall of heat and humidity—long days that blur together without any break. Winter is slush, 4 p.m. sunsets, and the brisk gale off the Charles that makes you question why you ever came to New England. Fall is the one season that doesn’t stagnate—that first bite of cold warns you that everything is about to change, with barely enough time to find your rain boots. But the wisps of saffron leaves in the air, coupled with sunlight bleeding through almost-barren trees, soften the blow of impending frost.

I’m not the first person to realize the beauty of this in-between season. John Keats wrote his famous lyrical poem “To Autumn” on September 19, 1819, celebrating the marvel of time’s passage. Rather than focusing on decay or loss, Keats describes how summer sunlight transitions into autumnal maturity.

In the first stanza, he imagines summer and autumn as partners: imagery of ripe fruit, bees buzzing about flowers, lush greenery, and endless warm days. For me, summers spent in the shadow of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains remind me that the whole world is alive, while fall introduces beautiful incongruities in color, weather, and sound. As the poem develops, Keats explores autumn’s relationship with time, personifying the season as a figure sitting on a granary floor, a harvester, a sleeper in a furrow, or a patient watcher at the cider press.

In the final stanza, Keats accepts summer’s departure. He doesn’t mourn the changing seasons but instead calls us to appreciate autumn’s arriving music—the sounds of gnats, bleating lambs, singing crickets, and gathering swallows (or the clacking keyboards of Widener and Lamont).

“To Autumn” is considered one of the greatest short lyric poems in the English language, speaking to something that both poets and college students can recognize. It grapples with mortality, foreshadowing Keats’s death less than two years later at just 25 years old—not much older than I am now. Keats’s attention to day-to-day glories amid changing nature urges us to accept the natural cycles of change and progression.

Beyond poems, fall is also my season to curl up beneath a fuzzy blanket and rewatch the same movies. Years after watching them for the first time, I can see Keats’s Romanticism reflected in many of these modern characters.

For example, “When Harry Met Sally” explores the growing love between the two protagonists over years of friendship. It’s set in New York City, among the warm, earthy tones of falling leaves. In one scene, Sally (Meg Ryan) and Harry (Billy Crystal) walk through Central Park amid tall trees and a burnt-orange landscape, cozily bundled in their own wool jackets. Thematically, the fall leaves add to the film’s main throughline of change and growth as we watch the ups and downs of Harry and Sally’s friends-to-lovers storyline.

Another fall favorite of mine is “Dead Poets Society,” a 1989 coming-of-age film. The main character, Todd (Ethan Hawke), and several of his friends and classmates are enraptured by their new English teacher, John Keating (Robin Williams). Keating encourages the boys to seize the day, explore the artistic callings in their own lives, and retain their individualism. At the same time, they struggle against an austere school system and demanding parents. (I like to imagine I do the same when I delay completing p-sets for late-night talks with friends over hot chocolate.) The transitional beauty of autumn serves as a fitting backdrop for their journey of self-discovery, and, indeed, my own, as I learn to grow into my new life here at Harvard.

That said, critics of fall have a point: it can feel cold, dark, and sad, with shorter days, looming seasonal depression, and the end of summer. However, to me, that’s the point. Fall is about facing cold, dark, and unfortunate things with warm lighting, cozy sweaters, a bowl of hot soup, and friends and family gathered around a table on Thanksgiving. Halloween itself is proof—a holiday that takes what is dark and frightening and transforms it into costumes and candy. As I slide my arms into my brown wool jacket, reliving the ache and comfort so central to fall, I hope that we can learn from the season how to handle change. When confronted with cold or uncertainty, we can find warmth in each other.

Mala Brumm ’30 (mbrumm@college.harvard.edu) says fall is about embracing change but has ordered the same cinnamon-sugar cortado since Sep. 1.

Hafeezat Ghaffar ’29 (hghaffar@college.harvard.edu) thinks decorative mood lighting cures seasonal depression.