Editor's letter: Gaudy season

last updated 8 January 2015

Summer turned to fall last weekend, but I didn’t have to read the newspapers to know it in my bones. The morning air has taken on a noticeable chill, and the late September light throws longer shadows. On my front lawn, two 85-year-old oak trees have begun shedding acorns at an alarming rate. They thud softly into the grass, bang against my old Subaru, and litter the driveway. When I come home at night, I roll down the windows to hear them cracking and popping under my tires. Needless to say, the squirrels are thrilled at this bonanza, as is a well-fed groundhog we’ve come to call, with affection, Fatty. The animals have been frenetic since the weather turned, digging holes, building nests, preparing for the shorter days to come.

I’m right with them. My pace quickens at the turn of the season, and I feel a sense of possibility. This is as it should be, according to chronobiologist Till Roenneberg, who studies how biological rhythms affect behavior. Roenneberg has found that the farther we live from the equator, the more likely we are to feel the ups and downs of seasonal change. And yet, humans “don’t understand the power of cyclicality,” he said. Autumn has a reputation for melancholy, but it’s my favorite time of year. And now I know why: Scientists have found that activity in the right frontal lobe of the brain—the center of fear and aggression—declines in the fall, while dopamine levels rise and testosterone peaks. And perhaps best of all, this is the start of the gaudy season that Albert Camus called the “second spring, where every leaf is a flower.”