Hail October! Surely this showy month awakened in many a lover of words and natural beauty the desire to pick up a pen. So many poets linger in the mellowness of autumn: Robert Frost, for example, who addressed this month with “O hushed October morning mild, / Thy leaves have ripened to the fall….” If you’re like me—and Frost as the rest of the poem indicates—you always want the leaves, in their full beauty, to linger just a little longer, dreading the winds and the rains that tear them from the trees. Like spring flowers, autumn leaves in all their magnificent glory seem hardly here before they’re gone.
Gina Malone, editor
Fortunately, this time of year brings other things to appreciate as the beauty fades. There are studio tours galore: in Beaverdam, Kenilworth and Henderson County. Weaverville holds its annual Art Safari and, in Sylva, artists convene for the WNC Pottery Festival. This is our fall Crafts issue. Read about some highly skilled makers and mark your calendar for the Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands.
There are some marvelous shows to catch, including Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre’s The Josephine Cabaret and Wortham Center for the Performing Arts’ Peking Acrobats Featuring the Shanghai Circus.
For our Spotlight On feature, Emma Castleberry explores the Lake Lure Flowering Bridge, a place my mother loved to visit and where my family goes now to remember her. Volunteers keep the Bridge lovely in all seasons, welcoming to pollinators and pedestrians alike.
Autumn, with its crunching leaves, vivid colors, woodfires, cool winds and ripe fruit, lavishes our senses. Savor the sensations. All too soon, these golden days will give way to the more austere beauty of winter. Enjoy this time that Friedrich Nietzsche called the “season of the soul.”
Gina Malone can be reached at gina@thelaurelofasheville.com.
