The colour of blood

My photo of Virgina creeper, Penshurst Place, October 2024

I think I like the ‘in between’ seasons best, the transitional seasons of spring and autumn. Spring is my favourite: I love the light returning after winter, the explosion of new electric greens in field and hedgerow, the delicate lace of blossom and its exquisite sent, the earth bursting back into life again. Spring is the season of resurrection and hope. But autumn is beautiful too – the glorious medley of scarlet, crimson, orange, yellow, copper, ochre, bronze. There is a special quality to autumn sunshine: sometimes watery pale, sometimes deep gold.

I often feel wistful while watching the peach-golden light of an autumn sunset. The past can haunt me then … past decisions, past mistakes, past losses, what could have been, what was. Once I went for a walk during a time of great emotional turmoil and the scarlet of the October leaves was almost physically painful to witness – they were the colour of blood, which summed up my interior state at the time. Yes, such was my emotional state that autumn colours caused me physical pain and made me feel nauseous. I’m glad that I’ve never experienced anything like that since: I really don’t want to feel sick when I look at nature! But I wonder if any of my fellow ACW members have ever experienced such a phenomenon? (Do any of you possess the wonderful neurological gift of synaesthesia, eg seeing colours when you listen to music, or tasting flavours when speaking words? It’s a superpower I would love to have …)

JRR Tolkien’s great fantasy saga The Lord of the Rings begins in autumn and ends in autumn – it’s one of the most autumnal stories of all time, with its profound themes of loss and grief and Eden restored and lost, and then briefly restored and lost again. One of my favourite classic novels, Rosamond Lehmann’s Dusty Answer, containing vivid descriptions of autumnal beauty, is another melancholy tale, a rite of passage story about the heroine discovering love and losing it, yet within her trauma lie the seeds of maturity and growth and discovering her authentic self. At least that’s how I interpreted it.

A non-fiction book which I frequently read is Neil Ansell’s The Last Wilderness: a journey into silence, recounting his solitary walks during spring and autumn in the Rough Bounds in the North West Highlands of Scotland. Ansell was slowly losing his hearing and already much birdsong was lost to him (his book was published in 2018). His haunting memoir celebrates the beauty of wild, desolate places and recounts his sorrowful acceptance of the limits of his own humanity: it’s also a poignant celebration of stillness and solitude.

How do you present the passing of the seasons in your work? As a reader, it’s important to me that an author does this skilfully and subtly. You can suggest the season through brief descriptions of the quality of light, the clothes your characters are wearing, even the food they eat, etc. And get the times of sunrise and sunset right, depending on where your story is set. Time and place really matter in a story, and the best writers nail this.

Autumn is a rich season – there’s so much scope in it for reflection, growth, and acceptance.

I’m a Licensed Lay Minister in the Diocese of Rochester. I wrote a devotional for the anthology Light for the Writer’s Soul, published by Media Associates International, and my short story ‘Magnificat’ appears in the ACW anthology Merry Christmas, Everyone.