The world feels different in autumn light. The sun slants lower, softening everything it touches with gold. Air that once shimmered with heat now carries the faint bite of cold, the scent of smoke and fallen leaves. These are the colors I love most — ochres and umbers, burnt sienna and crimson — earth tones that glow like embers before the dark. They speak of passage, of ripening and release, of beauty at its most temporary and complete.
Janet K. MacKay’s The Colours of Autumn captures that brief and perfect moment when the world seems to hold its breath. A golden canoe floats on still water, a mirror of light and motion, surrounded by the fire of turning leaves. The water is so calm you can almost feel the chill rising from it, the kind that seeps into your bones and clears your mind at once. The scene is quiet but not empty. It hums with unseen life — charged with love, with memory, with mystery.
The empty canoe tells a story. A shirt lies draped across the seat, suggesting the recent presence of someone playful, alive, unafraid of the cold water. Whoever they are, I imagine them swimming now, laughing at the shock of the chill, their voice echoing across the lake. I hope they are having a good time. The light dances on the ripples they leave behind.
This image carries me to the places where I’ve lived my own versions of that scene: backpacking the Butterfield Trail when the air turns sharp and the leaves crunch underfoot; floating down the Current River, watching the hillsides flame with color as the sun sinks behind them; fishing at dusk after a long day, when the water turns glassy and the first stars tremble in its reflection. It’s the rhythm of autumn — that gentle slowing, that sense of the world turning inward even as it glows outward in color.
Fall brings with it its own sacred rituals. Cooking over an open flame, the scent of woodsmoke clinging to everything. The warmth of a bonfire surrounded by friends, sparks rising into the cold night. Hayrides and laughter, breath visible in the air. And then, those more intimate moments — snuggling beneath a blanket under the stars, the warmth only two people together can create, bodies pressed close against the gathering chill. These are the quiet, human miracles of the season: not grand gestures but simple acts of togetherness, of presence.
MacKay’s painting holds all of this. It’s not just a landscape; it’s a memory we’ve all lived in some form. The canoe, the reflection, the light — they are the ingredients of autumn’s intimacy. The painting reminds me that beauty often resides in the pause between action and rest, between the fire and the frost. It’s the same feeling that comes after laughter, when silence falls and the world seems utterly, achingly alive.
For autumn is life near the edge — the final gasp before the deep hush. The trees know it, and so do we. Every blaze of color, every shared flame, every mirrored reflection on still water is a form of courage, a refusal to fade quietly into sleep. Winter is coming, and with it, the season of rest. But before the world closes its eyes, it opens them wider than ever — dazzling us with color, motion, and memory.
When I look at The Colours of Autumn, I see that defiant grace. It reminds me that to live fully is to embrace the briefness of our fire. The canoe floats in eternal light, the air shimmers with the last warmth of the year, and the silence to come feels not like loss but promise — the promise of rest, renewal, and return. Autumn is not an ending; it is the edge of dreaming, where life burns brightest before surrendering to sleep.