IT'S OCTOBER & I ONLY HAVE MYSELF TO BLAME

I only have myself to blame. By now I should have known better. I asked a botanist to explain the dazzling colors of fall to me....!

My neighbor's son-in-law is a botanist, and a very fine one indeed. But instead of doing what I usually do -- simply beholding the great spectacle that is nature's annual funeral -- this year I asked him to explain its rapture of colors. Oh and he did. With relish.

I learned about chlorophyll, carotenoids and anthouganins. What's more I learned that while temperature and rainfall are variables in each region, what counts most is the absolute of our lengthening nighttime. It is this lack of sunlight that triggers this seasonal symphony you and I love so much.

Only now how could I love something the same way as I did before...? Before I learned about these incredibly complex factors at hidden work...? Suddenly fall wasn't quite the same for me anymore. An ancient veil had been slipped off its hidden heart for me to see and study. Big mistake. It wasn't his, it was mine....!

It would be like learning about Joan's jawbone alignment and eye pigmentation in order to better understand why I fell in love with her. But I didn't fall in love with the total of her individual evolutionary parts. Or even with that sum which is greater than the total of her parts. What I fell in love with was the same mysterious maze of Joan-ness that I do each October with fall-ness. This love is, I would argue, what it is, simply and grandly because it is. To slice and dice, graph and chart love -- either my Joan or my fall -- is for me an act of needless reductionism.

The botanist -- and other such fine minds -- often advise me to "grow up." They contend we can love the explained as well as the mysterious, the precise as well as the poetic. And my head tells me they are correct. Only I have to insist upon at least two serious exceptions: Joan and Fall.