The lone maple among the white pine and spruce out­side the win­dow of my “writ­ing nook” trans­formed into autumn colours so sub­tly I only reg­is­tered dif­fer­ences every few days. As the days grew short­er and cold­er, the leaves became more vivid, and sud­den­ly, they’re gone. The bare­ly per­cep­ti­ble pace of change gave me pause to reflect that rather than sav­ing time, the nano-sec­ond fast tech­nol­o­gy at our fin­ger­tips speeds its passage.

So much is avail­able so fast that we’ve got some­thing new to con­sid­er before we’ve even real­ly absorbed, nev­er mind appre­ci­at­ed, the now.
The accel­er­a­tion began sub­tly, in lock-step with the process of glob­al warm­ing that is alter­ing sea­sons for the worse. Until the 19th cen­tu­ry, days were ordered by sun­rise and sun­set. The fac­to­ry whis­tles of the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion cut that into demand­ing, reg­i­ment­ed seg­ments.  The Com­put­er Age has whipped them into fran­tic moments. Who among us isn’t irri­tat­ed when a com­put­er takes more than a few sec­onds to boot up, or obey a search or oth­er com­mand? The faster the process, the more we do, the less patience we have, which para­dox­i­cal­ly speeds up time.

Watch­ing a sea­son­al change seems to me to be a much more pro­duc­tive, and cer­tain­ly health­i­er way to mark time. Autumn is gen­er­al­ly the short­est of Canada’s four dis­tinct sea­sons. Like fine wine and sin­gle malt, it is best when savoured. There is, of course, a price for the priv­i­lege, but in the won­drous log­ic of Nature, there is always a pay­back. All sum­mer long, the leaves on the poplars sig­nal the approach of rain by turn­ing upside down.
As the weath­er folk­lore of the Farmer’s Almanac (which in this case hap­pens to be true) describes it: “When leaves show their under­sides, be very sure rain betides.

I must lis­ten to the radio or check my lap­top for a weath­er report now, but in place of the leaves, there’s a win­dow-like view across the lake. It makes, almost wel­come, the times my com­put­er doesn’t do exact­ly what I want when I want, and I look up from it in what would nor­mal­ly be frus­tra­tion, and often ire.

         A MYSTERIOUS, SUBTLE PROCESS     

In this part of Cana­da autumn is a glo­ri­ous link between the all-too-short warmth of sum­mer and what will, in a few months, feel like an end­less sea­son of bit­ing cold days, snow shov­el­ling, icy haz­ards and long dark nights.

The pro­gres­sion from lush green leaves to a riot of colour to bare branch­es and dead leaves rustling on the ground, turn­ing into nour­ish­ment for new growth in the spring, is as log­i­cal and com­plex as a net­work of micro­proces­sors in a com­put­er system.
Leaf cells con­tain chloro­phyll, an extra­or­di­nary chem­i­cal that absorbs ener­gy from sun­light, and use it to trans­form car­bon diox­ide and water into car­bo­hy­drates, such as sug­ars and starch. Less day­light and low­er tem­per­a­tures slow the process and the lack of chloro­phyl allows oth­er colours inside the leaves to show.

Once the leaves’ food-mak­ing process is no longer viable, the tree forms a bar­ri­er between them and its branch­es and the leaves, and lets them go. (I con­fess I used “nano-tech­nol­o­gy” to learn that.)

 

NO OPTION DEADLINES

 As mag­i­cal, even excit­ing as autumn can be to humans, for oth­er crea­tures, it’s a dead­line. Adopt­ing John Lennon’s wis­dom that “Life is what hap­pens to you while you’re busy mak­ing oth­er plans” isn’t an option.

My res­i­dent chip­munk stuffs cheek pouch­es full of the nuts I lay out, scam­pers off to store them and is back mak­ing a chirp­ing sound to demand more before the jar can be put away.
Hav­ing spent a work­ing life as a hostage to dead­lines — fil­ing copy in time to make the next edi­tion of a news­pa­per, dri­ven by unal­ter­able satel­lite time to get a TV sto­ry on air — I under­stand and sym­pa­thise with his fran­tic activity.
The chip­munk will enjoy his efforts through months of semi-hiber­na­tion in a snug, snow-cov­ered burrow.
The joy of con­quer­ing a jour­nal­ism dead­line is brief, over­tak­en by the relent­less approach of the next one. As much as I loved the chal­lenges (and rush), there’s much to be said for spend­ing time with­out a watch on your wrist, or in your head. And being grate­ful you’re not a chipmunk.

While the inex­orable accel­er­a­tion of tech­nol­o­gy can­not be ignored, from now on, every time my com­put­er stut­ters, I’ll try to look up, remem­ber the maple, and treat the break as a sea­son, even if it is only mea­sured in seconds.

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