Fall '26: Touch The Earth

Dear Friend,
As the light begins to slip from the edges of the days and the air takes on a sharper quality, a feeling to draw inward pulls at my collar. I think of the words of Mary Oliver:
“Don't you imagine the leaves dream now how comfortable it will be to touch the earth instead of the nothingness of the air and the endless freshets of wind?”
I am not a leaf, yet I understand the desire to be grounded after the flight and folly of summer.
My grounding looks like making a loaf of Lammas bread, a ritual marking the beginning of the grain harvest. Grain cut and milled into flour, kneaded by hand, left to rise, then baked - a literal and symbolic reminder of the collaboration between ourselves and the natural world, and a stabelizing touchstone into the fall season.
Rituals help focus our attention on what is happening in the natural world, tuning our senses to the turning of the seasons. Traditionally, this is the time of year to gather the last of the summer harvest and preserve it into sauces and jams - little reminders of sunshine to sustain us through the darkest passages of the year. What cannot be preserved is shared out in gratitude, which is perhaps why festivals and feasts have long been woven into autumn traditions.
Modern life can leave us feeling untethered from these seasonal rhythms, but something as simple as baking Lammas bread becomes a grounding act - an acknowledgement that life moves in seasons rather than in constant productivity.
As we step into fall, what ritual, big or small, will you be participating in? Perhaps pulling out a long-neglected handwork project, crunching along a nature path collecting berries, examining the sculptural branches newly bare without their summer leaves, or simply taking in the sounds, textures, and scents of the season. Please share in your letter.
And if there is no particular ritual calling to you this season, then simply write about what fall looks like outside your window. Give us a snapshot of the sounds, colors, and smells surrounding you.