Fall Envelopes Fayetteville

I’ve been taking long walks lately; any citizen of Northwest Arkansas would be remiss not to this time of year. Sometimes they’re to the park by my home (the richest, loveliest park I’ve ever seen, second only to Central Park herself). To the coffee shop via the Greenway, our beloved walking path that runs thirty-seven-miles-long through the length of the region. To the downtown square with a friend or two, through streets lined with maple trees and craftsman homes made of shale stone (the overwhelming architecture in the area, luckily for us). It feels like I can’t walk enough, even after wandering wide-eyed for hours on end. Like every other poetry-inclined person to exist in early fall, I feel an overwhelming sense that the season’s change must be trying to tell me something.

"Like every other poetry-inclined person to exist in early fall, I feel an overwhelming sense that the season’s change must be trying to tell me something."

With my head tilted back, I ask the turning leaves in Wilson Park to impart their wisdom. Is their lesson that change is promised (thank goodness)? Is it that death infallibly makes way for new life? Is it that things come together and fall apart, always? Is it that life is a constant balance of learning to carry both joy and sorrow at once? Or are they simply asking me to keep paying attention? “Whatever fits,” they say. “In 2020,” I respond, “they all fit.” I can conclude, at least, that every last prospective lesson this season offers carries green hope. Autumn is generous with opportunities for peace; perhaps we need only to surrender to them.

And so, with fresh, autumnal resolve, we’ve been gulping in Fayetteville’s bounty as any two native Louisianans would—like kids in a candy shop, we’re adults who’ve stayed giddy with the delight of our new home’s offerings. Whether camping by the river under a milky moon, or sipping hot drinks on one of the benches found at nearly every block, or hiking right here in city-limits under an absolute chroma of fall color, I’m tempted to say that the novelty hasn’t worn off.

"Autumn is generous with opportunities for peace; perhaps we need only to surrender to them."

But then…I have to wonder if it’s novelty at all. It’s hard to believe that one might ever become jaded of a place that could make you believe  all-out Halloween decorations are a city mandate. The gray-haired couples strolling hand-in-hand down Lafayette Street, necks wrapped in scarlet scarves, faces aglow like teenagers, seem testament to that. Maybe fall in Fayetteville really is an endless well of magic, an enchantress who visits each year to make even hardened hearts soft again. 

See more of writer Camille Delaune's photography at camilledelaune.com and follow along with her journey in art and in Fayetteville at @camilledelaune on Instagram.