After the fall

Telluride Daily Planet, e-edition, Friday, November 7, 2025

He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

We have the privilege of living high in the mountains, where our fall season of gold is pure brilliance, blazing for weeks and weeks on end. As many of us are, I’m partial to aspen trees, which feel to me like personal matchsticks, igniters of an internal pilot light that set the furnace going before the crawl towards darker and darker and whiter and bluer days.

Fall, for me is an “orangeout” flecked with black crow confetti. It is a time to gawk and be in wonder, and never to underestimate the power of these feelings on the general state of our health. An entire season where people can be seen standing and looking around, taking it in, feeling it? We know it’s good for us and that more of it in our lives is even better

However filled we are with daytime wonderment, fall can still bring challenges to our mental and physical health. Darker days and hour changes can potentially disrupt the circadian rhythms that keep us sleeping normally; and comfort foods may call to us to put on that bulk or “winter 10,” as one friend calls it. Our skin and hair is drier, and the cold weather can affect our joints. It’s flu season. It’s pre-holiday and worry-about-snow season. The year is coming to an end, and with that the pressure to review and plan ahead.

Finally, beholding a leafless and desaturated landscape, we may start to feel a little desaturated ourselves. In the Ayurvedic tradition of holistic health and wellbeing, fall/early winter is associated with vata dosha signified by cold, dry, windy and mobile energies prone to causing restlessness, anxiety and dryness when out of balance. Despite my tendencies to want to push back, I am working to embrace the nudge towards appropriate counterbalances found in warm meals, slower living, rest and reflection, and a gentler, lower burning energy.

Both in Ayurveda and in our own cultural rhythms, a part of us leans in toward what we need most, and sometimes we even listen to the intelligence of the human body-mind and follow suit. What feels natural and is recommended are warming (and moist) foods like soups and stews, porridges and casseroles. Root vegetables, of course. Cooked fruits in compotes. Whole grains that taste and feel good for your particular constitution (not dry, if possible, as in breakfast cereal). Warming herbs and beverages.

An easy and delicious dish that feels so good in the fall is kitchari (spelled various ways), typically a blend of rice, lentils, vegetables, ghee (clarified butter) and spices. It stimulates a sluggish digestion and calms an overly anxious one. I liked an easy quinoa version I discovered online – for a little more protein – and found the spice mixture super satisfying and nourishing. Look for some combination of black pepper, mustard seed, fenugreek, ginger, turmeric, coriander, and/or cumin. An easier option still is golden milk or tea (called a turmeric latte in coffee shops), which is made with form of milk blended with many of the spices listed above, plus turmeric, cinnamon and a little honey.

Fall, then, is a time to take care of ourselves and learn to wind down in our Vata-dominant, fast-paced, multi-tasking, digitally stimulated and ever-changing culture. It is a time to embrace and enjoy easy routines, connect with others, lean into warmth and moisture (where we can here at altitude), and practice grounding through meditation or slower breathing techniques.

You may have missed “the great lock in of 2025,” which Gen Z initiated on September 1, as a time to lock in new and healthier habits before January 1. Relax and embrace an easier timeline. Start now, or start on December 1, even. The point is not to add another thing to the list but to use a little darkening down time to take better care of yourself and attend deliberately to one thing at a time in a nurturing way.

If you really want to talk about the changing of the seasons, let’s talk about Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago not far from the North Pole, where for 80 days from mid-November through January (it just started) they experience the darkest part of the “polar night,” where the sun is never higher than 6 degrees on the horizon. They crank up their cozy skills, make fires, socialize, and use light therapy in order to live in closer harmony with the Earth and its seasons, even when extreme.

Here, in less extreme climes, and usually within a week of the time change, I put up a string of interior lights that plink on at 4:30 in the afternoon and glow through the night. It’s my way of making the coziness a winter way of life.