Reflecting on Fall

Fall is a time of harvest, but it's also a time of letting go. With 100 days left in 2025 and the seeds I've been tending not producing a lot of fruit, perhaps its time to reflect on letting go.

As I write this, it’s the first day of fall. There are also 100 days left in 2025. Or one day left, if you believe the section of Christian TikTok that swears the Rapture is happening tomorrow. I’m no theologian, but I feel confident that the rapture isn’t imminent.

I’ve always loved fall. I’ve spent the majority of my life in and around the Blue Ridge Mountains where fall puts on a show. The trees melt from green to shades of orange, yellow, and red to form a sight that looks like a watercolor painting. There are pumpkin patches, apple orchards. Halloween in my hometown, at least back then, was still like something from a ‘90s sitcom. I could always sense the season change. It wasn’t that the temperature was cooler or that my mom zipped me into a jacket to go play outside. It was always the first sniff of a neighbor burning wood in their fireplace that told me it was fall.

Growing up, fall was my mom’s caramel apples, the local fall festival, a pumpkin patch visit, apple cider donuts, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and yes, the smell of the wood burning fireplaces all around my small town. It was magical. It still is, even though I’ve gravitated to the city side of life. It’s still pumpkin patches and apple cider, football games and a Hocus Pocus movie night. It’s a Gilmore Girls rewatch and a Starbucks trip for that first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the year.

Yet fall is also about harvest and letting go.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot as I navigate a tough season.

In theory, we plant in the spring and summer to harvest in the fall. Not every seed grows, of course, but if we tend the soil, water the sprouts, and provide enough sunlight we should see at least some harvest. It may not be what we want or as bountiful as we expected, but we should see something.

But what if we don’t?

What if all the planting and the tending yields… nothing?

What if harvest season comes and you walk out to the garden only to dig into the earth expecting potatoes but find nothing? What if the vines don’t bear fruit?

Perhaps that’s why fall is also about letting go.

Have you ever noticed that the leaves are there one day and gone tomorrow? Your drive is a scenic fall postcard one morning. The next, it’s a gray winter. The mountains that were once vibrant with color are now colorless mounds in the distance. Your yard has a few leaves scattered about one evening. The next? It’s in dire need of a rake.

The leaves let go.

I think a barren harvest is a lot like the leaves letting go. Sometimes the seeds we plant aren’t meant for the soil they’re in. They need a different climate or nutrients that aren’t available to them. They don’t sprout because, perhaps, they were never meant to.

There are things in my life that I’ve been tending to for months now, and in some cases, years. I’m doing all the right things, following all the care instructions, if you will. I’ve planted these seeds before, after all, and they have yielded a bountiful harvest. This time? They aren’t growing. There is no harvest.

That might be the point. Maybe these seeds aren’t meant to grow anymore. There’s a reason farmers rotate their crops. Soil need a break. And maybe, I’m supposed to be planting different seeds. Perhaps I’m trying to harvest something no longer meant to grow.

I’m reflecting a lot on that idea: that maybe I’ve worn down the soil and it’s time to move on to a new patch, plant a new crop, see what that harvest looks like. Fall leads into winter, of course, and not much grows in winter, but winter is the perfect time for hibernation. Turning inward, reflecting, resting.

Dreaming.

Clarifying.

Planning.

How is your harvest this fall? Was it bountiful? Or lacluster? What have you planted that just isn’t growing? Does it need a little longer to sprout?

Or is it time to rotate to a new patch of soil and try your hand at a new crop?

I’m going to take that question into the fall and winter. I’m going to use these last 100 days to assess what I’m sowing and perhaps invest in some new seeds.

How about you?