Two quotes resonated – on beauty and changing seasons – when writing my 2018 book “Eagles and Evergreens,” one of them by novelist Albert Camus, the other epic Lewis Carroll. They wash back.
You might think Camus an odd choice, as he was a French philosopher and novelist, actually won the Nobel Prize for literature, but is considered an absurdist, a humanist who fought with the French Resistance in World War II. Perhaps he was just a widely wandering mind, always puzzling.
The quote I most like is about autumn, this post-summer, pre-winter season, brightness of change all around us, yet foretelling in this sharp shift bigger things to come. Here is the breather between hot and cold extremes, a short bridge between two great, opposing seasons, yet place of peace.
Wrote Camus, “Autumn is a second spring, when every leaf is a flower.” That simple sentiment inspired the opening for my chapter “Fall Running.” Relooking it, every year is as gorgeous.
“One day, temperatures suddenly drop. The world fills with crimson maples and flaming oaks. Sunsets refract in millions of fluttering leaves, clinging to tens of thousands of trees. Fall runners shoot down this corridor of color, instantly happy.”
“Some days, autumn is lime and strawberry, tangerine and cherry, sometimes the whole fruit bowl. Evening runs are iridescent trout, steamy lobster, green chard and pecan pie. Sometimes it is all a blur.”
Even now, years later, it is the same, peace and excitement intertwined, walks as bright and cheering as any sunny summer day or post-blizzard wallow in whiteness. Fall is fun, naturally festive, and to borrow from Camus, forests flower and every mountainside becomes a garden.
Then comes winter, and here it was Lewis Carroll who kept my attention, although I almost started that section with the inevitable Robert Frost. He did get lots of play later, but Caroll came to mind.
Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson) was almost as odd as Albert Camus, different sides of the Channel. Carroll’s life was done first, opening in 1832, closing in 1898. Camus arrived in 1913.
Still, they both loved nature, had a knack for wild thinking, writing, and living a storied life. Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, The Jabberwocky, The Hunting of the Snark.
While Camus was French, Carroll was English, don at Christ Church College, Oxford, a scholar, teacher, and writer, but also gentle by nature. From childhood, he was deaf in one year, had survived whooping cough, stammered, and lost his mother young. Still be persevered.
While Oxford does not often get the sort of winters New England does, or at least not that Maine does, Carroll was a thoughtful observer of the seasons, and so his quote popped and stayed.
The quote that will soon again describe the world around us, as we shift from Fall to Winter, is this one, and it precedes my chapter “Winter Fury.”
Wrote Carroll: “I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt, and perhaps it says ‘Go to sleep, darlings, ‘til the summer comes again.’”
The quote seems, not always but often, to describe the view and nature out a typical Maine – or perhaps northern – winter window. And then, after the chapter about a storm, I penned another called “The Aftermath,” which was often about snow showing, before the world waked up.
One paragraph describes that post-storm beauty. Contemplating my first snowshoeing expedition of the season, I wrote. “I could go anywhere. Breathing was prickly, like peppermint. The air was alive. Lungs loved it. Frozen air tingles. I was clean. Rich with oxygen, stunning to inhale. It woke me, the way mud tickling your toes wakes you. It was stimulating. This was real winter at its best.”
And there you have it, two quotes for change of season, which in turn inspired me to write, and maybe you to read. Keep your wood pile stacked, fireplace ready, as seasons come, brisk and bright, fun filled, light and heady.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!
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