Summer’s End

The last days of summer always carried a strange mix of joy and sorrow for me—like the sweetness of a peach just before it begins to bruise. The fields behind our old farmhouse shimmered under a fading sun, the wheat turning gold as though nature wanted to give one final burst of color before retreating into the silence of autumn.

Harvest season was always loud—tractors rumbling, baskets thumping, voices calling across the rows. Yet beneath the noise, I could always feel something else: a quiet truth humming through the air. Summer was ending. Warmth was slipping away. And once again, life was asking us to let go.

I used to walk through the fields with Grandpa during harvest. His steps were slow, but his eyes were sharp, scanning the rows with a practiced tenderness. “Harvest is memory-making,” he would say. “But don’t forget—it’s also nature giving up everything she’s grown. That’s the price of the feast.”

As a child, I didn’t understand those words. Why would something so happy—so full of sun and laughter—carry such heaviness? But as I stood beside him, watching wheat fall beneath the blade, or apples drop into waiting baskets, I began to feel it. Harvest wasn’t just collecting. It was ending.

This year, the air felt different. It was still warm, but the breeze carried a faint chill, like an early warning. The sky hung lower, softer. Birds gathered more often on the fence line, restless and preparing to leave. Summer had one foot out the door.

We gathered apples that had turned red enough to glow in our hands. Their sweetness filled the air when we sliced them open. My younger cousins raced each other down the orchard rows, laughing so loudly the crows scattered from the branches. Meanwhile, Grandma hummed at her kitchen table, laying out jars for the preserves she’d make long after the heat disappeared.

There was joy everywhere—yet the kind that feels fragile, like you have to hold your breath to keep from breaking it.

When the last wagon of wheat was brought in, Grandpa and I sat on the hill overlooking the fields. The sky was orange, melting into purple. The land looked stripped—beautiful still, but bare in a way that always made my chest ache.

“Everything ends to begin again,” Grandpa said gently, passing me a warm mug of cider. “That’s the rhythm of things. You can’t love the harvest unless you understand the cost.”

For the first time, I realized he wasn’t talking only about seasons.

Life, too, had its harvests—moments when we gathered everything we had worked for, everything we had hoped for… moments that should have been joyful, but still carried the sting of loss. To grow meant to let go. To move forward meant to surrender what had been.

As we watched the fields darken, crickets began their nightly song. The cold crept in slowly, almost politely. I wrapped my sweater tighter around my shoulders and leaned my head on Grandpa’s arm. He didn’t speak, but I felt the warmth of him—a warmth that, like summer, I knew wouldn’t last forever.

But maybe that was the point.

Summer ends. Warmth fades. Fields empty.

Yet every ending carries the seed of another beginning.

Harvest, I finally understood, wasn’t just a season.

It was a reminder to cherish what grows, accept what must be released, and trust what will return.

And as the first stars pierced the sky, I whispered a quiet promise to myself:

I will honor every season—sweet, harsh, warm, or cold—because each one shapes who I become.