The Nature of Letting Go

Harvest

My past
A banquet set with rich experience
Memories falling
Like golden leaves
On the slope of my life

Autumn in the Ozarks

I didn’t experience the magic of fall until I was 23. My husband had been accepted into a graduate school psychology program at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. We had been married just over a year. We packed up what little we had accumulated in Austin, Texas, let go, and set off for Arkansas. I had been told that the four-season climate there was lovely, but nothing prepared me for the beauty and magic of my first fall in the Ozarks. 

As October settled over the area, the hills burst into shades of red, yellow, and orange. By Halloween, the mostly green landscape had morphed into a carnival of color and taken on a completely different personality. It was nothing less than pure magic and metamorphosis to me, how these trees transformed their dress into something I wasn’t completely sure was still a tree. It was so different than the Texas falls I had experienced all my life. Especially magical were the sugar maples that turned fluorescent orange. When I walked beneath them, I felt like I was passing under a canopy of color that belonged to another world. Then they went through the process of letting go, spiraling, floating, and drifting to the earth to form an otherworldly carpet beneath my feet, a pathway to the coming season of dormancy and reflection.

The Land of Enchantment

Five years later, we let go into a new adventure as Brian was accepted into a psychology internship at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. We were introduced to autumn in The Land of Enchantment where gold is nature’s color of choice. The gold of shimmering aspens on the slopes of the Sandia Mountains and the gold of ancient cottonwoods lining the bosque of the Rio Grande River, all juxtaposed against the azure of a New Mexico sky. One of our autumn rituals was to take a drive along the Jemez River where the gold of the cottonwoods splashed against the bright red clay of Jemez Canyon and that famous azure sky. The colors are still etched into my mind. Then there was the smell of green chile roasting and the International Balloon Fiesta with hundreds of colorful hot air balloons dotting the Albuquerque sky everyday for a week, balloons that could only be launched by letting go of the ropes fastening them to the ground.

Pacific Northwest Nature

Brian eventually took a job in Yakima, Washington, just east of the Cascade Mountains. Another letting go. In the Pacific Northwest, fall is the tamarack trees, deciduous conifers whose gold needles dot the mountainsides alongside the ever-present evergreens. The big event of autumn in the Cascades is the salmon run. Thousands of salmon fighting their way against the current up the Columbia River Gorge and following their internal GPS for miles into smaller, icy tributaries. Here they spawn, lay their eggs, and die, while eagles and bears lie in wait to feast on the carcasses. The ultimate letting go in order to birth a new generation. The cycle of life. It is truly something to behold. 

Surrender

After a glorious two and half years in the Pacific Northwest, we decided to return to Albuquerque. A 96-year-old fall ritual in Santa Fe is the burning of Zozobra on Labor Day weekend, an annual celebration of letting go. Zozobra, otherwise known as Old Man Gloom, is a giant paper mache’ marionette, several stories high. He wears a big frown, and residents submit what they want to let go from the past year. These submissions are literally built into Zozobra’s frame. He is set on an outdoor stage, and hundreds of people gather in anticipation of his demise. As the sun sets, the giant  puppet begins to move and moan and groan loudly. This is the crowd’s cue to begin chanting, “Burn him!” Fireworks and sparklers are lit all around Zozobra until it is clear that his end is near. Then, the “Fire Spirit” appears with a torch and dances up the stage to his feet, taunting him. He is lit ablaze as the crowd cheers and watches him go up in a spectacular show of flames. Then the crowd strolls to the Santa Fe Plaza and parties the night away, free of the cares of the past year. I have been. It’s definitely cathartic. This years event was virtual, but no less powerful.

Brian died on the fall equinox, September 22, 1998. I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. He loved fall, so there was a strange sort of “rightness” about the timing of his passing. As I watched the hot air balloons dot the sky after his death, I was reminded that sometimes we have to let go to soar higher. This time of year always carries a bittersweet feeling for me, the sweet and bitter memories of a lifetime of autumns all sown together into this season of change and harvest. Fall reminds me that change is the nature of nature – and the magic of nature. Without change, we wouldn’t experience the magic of those fall leaves. The more I meditate, the more I realize that the best places I go in meditation usually follow a deeper and deeper surrender on my part. It’s valuable practice for living. Trust and surrender. Trust and surrender. The paradox is that the more I let go, the more I feel connected to something larger than myself. 

I encourage you to create your own fall ritual for letting go. What can you let go of? Fear? Despair? Trying to control things? Find a way to honor it and surrender it into the unknown. This clears a space for you to harvest something new. Energy Medicine Yoga founder, Lauren Walker, says, “The trees let go of their leaves, not as a surrender to death, but in a surrender to the next turning of the wheel.” One of my favorite picture books, The Fall of Freddie the Leaf, by Leo Buscaglia, is a beautifully told story of the turning of the wheel. I read it every year.

An Exercise for Letting Go

Here is a short energy practice from Lauren that you can do to assist with the transition process of the equinox. Stand and cross your arms around your ribcage, like you are giving yourself a big hug. Slowly rock from side to side as your breathe in and out through your nose, mouth closed. Pull the air through the back of your throat so that you sound a bit like Darth Vader while you breathe. In yoga, this is called the Ujjayi breath. When you feel complete with this, place your hands on your thighs and imagine grounding energy flowing through your legs into to ground, like the roots of a tree. Breathe. Then inhale and take a slight backbend, opening your arms at your sides, palms open, at hip level. As you exhale, bring your hands forward, as if hugging a tree in front of you, fingertips not quite touching, while you make a hissing sound (ssssss) like a snake. This sequence of self-comforting, grounding, opening, and releasing is based on a Chinese system called The Five Elements and is a way of clearing old or stagnant energy. Repeat this several times with the intention of releasing everything to a higher power, trusting in the divine, in the magic and healing that comes from letting go.

Be well. 

Namaste’