Making Time to Enjoy Autumn

Apple-picking at Russell Orchards

     If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, but clinical rotations are crazy. The schedule changes every 5 weeks, if not weekly or daily, and free time tends to be a precious commodity. After all, if you're not actually at your rotation site, sleeping, or commuting, you're expected to be studying and learning. There really are times when you sort of have to tell friends and family that they won't see you for a while. Despite the craziness though, you really do need to take time for yourself. It's not healthy to live constantly on the go, and without any time to do the things you enjoy, be with the people you love, or even have time for self-reflection. So you have to learn to make the time, and to seize the opportunities that arise. 

   My last rotation was in the emergency department, and I had a schedule of 3 days on, 3 days off. It was so amazing to actually know from the first day of rotation exactly what my schedule would be for the next 5 weeks, and I tried to make the most of it. Sometimes this meant catching up on more "grown-up" tasks, which is why most of my Halloween was spent cleaning my apartment, doing laundry, making pie and apple butter, paying bills, and listening to podcasts and audiobooks all the while. You can make time for fun though too. October is the time of peak fall foliage for New England, so I took walks on my days off, scheduled in some activities with friends, and when my parents came to visit, I'd already arranged my schedule in the ED so that I had time to spend with them. I love both photography and poetry, and since this month I actually had time to indulge both those loves, the rest of today's posts will simply be pictures from the last month or so, with poems about autumn interspersed between.

Salem Woods

Thompson's Meadow

The morns are meeker than they were,

The nuts are getting brown;

The berry's cheek is plumper,

The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,

The field a scarlet gown.

Lest I should be old-fashioned,

I'll put a trinket on.

-Autumn by Emily Dickinson 

Willowdale State Forest

October turned my maple's leaves to gold;
The most are gone now; here and there one lingers:
Soon these will slip from out the twigs' weak hold,
Like coins between a dying miser's fingers
-Maple Leaves by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Harmony Grove Cemetery

Willowdale State Forest

The autumn's a gorgeous golden cup,
With a warm, empurpled rim;
The sunset lavishly fills it up
With rosy wine to the brim.

And while the wind so wearily grieves
Through the grasses parched and dead,
It spills the wine on trembling leaves
And turns them yellow and red.
-A Cup of Nature by Richard Kendall Munkittrick

Willowdale State Forest

Harmony Grove Cemetery

As dyed in blood the streaming vines appear.
While long and long the wind about them grieves:
The heart of Autumn must have broken here.
And poured its treasure out upon the leaves.
-Woodbines in October by Charlotte Fiske Bates

Greenlawn Cemetery

Oh, Autumn! why so soon
Depart the hues that make thy forests glad;
Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon,
And leave thee wild and sad?

Ah! 'twere a lot too blest 
For ever in thy colored shades to stray;
Amid the kisses of the soft south-west
To rove and dream for aye;

And leave the vain low strife
That makes men mad-the tug for wealth and power-
The passions and the cares that wither life,
And waste its little hour.
-Excerpt from Autumn Woods by William Cullen Bryant

Greenlawn Cemetery

Willowdale State Forest

 Now in golden glory goes
Autumn toward the time of snows:
Ere white winter come indeed,
Speed the hours, with music speed.

Heed not winter's mournful breath,
Sighing at the thought of death:
Make but music, dearly sad;
Make but music, gravely glad.

Music is a king of kings,
Mightiest of immortal things:
Music is a lord of lords,
Ruling all with royal chords.

Though the woodland ways be chill,
Though the woodland choirs be still:
Music moves the starry choir,
Music sets the soul on fire.
-Song I by Lionel Johnson

Willowdale State Forest

I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods,

Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;

The naked, silent trees have taught me this, -

The loss of beauty is not always loss!

-Except from November by Elizabeth Stoddard

Willowdale State Forest