The viburnum leaves are now a rich garnet red. The goldenrods’ greying, frizzled heads tentatively touch the frosted earth, and the venerable maple reluctantly drops her golden leaves, strewing an unkempt pelt of brown and bronze and rust across the lawn.

Koo is my Inuit carving. He lives on the kitchen windowsill, silent companion to my goings-on. In late October, though, I always turn him so he can peer north out the window to be on the lookout for his compatriots who will soon fly south for the winter. He is very old. Hobbling, arms outstretched, he braces for what he imagines will be the inevitable fall. He looks somewhat desperate to keep up with his own long-absent tribe, but the dark-eyed juncos in their freshly sown grey and white overcoats will be welcomed joyfully as they have been every year. The alpha of this clan, proudly donning the darkest coat of all, will soon arrive first to scout the terrain for potential sustenance.

Yesterday, I slashed the stalks of the poke that had settled in the stone circle where we hold solstice fires and dragged them unceremoniously to the brush pile. They bled a little, causing me a momentary pause in what felt like an act of brutality, yet I trust the plant will return and serve the birds juicy dark berries next fall.

In my solitary wilderness of grief, I am learning that insights about my new psychic landscape evolve slowly and then often obscure themselves in the tangle of trees and underbrush. I struggle to assign an illusion of meaning to each step along the way.

There are traces on my mind that can not be removed. Many are the memories of a companionship that is irreplaceable, memories of love and touch and support that will, in time of need, remind me of who I am. Physicist Carlo Rovelli tells us every physical system gains its properties only in relation to other systems. Each person is a physical system, which means that our minds bear traces of all its encounters with everything in the environment, including, of course, other human beings. Especially, no doubt, those closest to us.

We also sometimes find an unexpected toughness, or resilience, in ourselves when we are subjected to great loss or disaster. The poke surprised me when I tried to eradicate it from the circle of stone. It resisted absolute surrender; I was unable to extract its roots from the ground. It reminded me that though there are ongoing and invisible changes in our appearance and in our ever-fluid feelings, some essence seems to hold. Moving toward the winter solstice, through the darkness, I will suffer, consciously and subconsciously, inevitable changes that will alter the nature of my present grief. But it is hard to accept not having walked this path before.

Koo is carved from stone, but though he appears solid, inert, he is composed of atoms constantly in motion. The motion is invisible to us given our perspective in time, but it is understood today that interactions and relationships between elements never cease. He, too, will one day, perhaps a millennium from now, change his appearance and erode.

Grief often feels inert. One feels caught by the sharp thorns in the brambles that inhibit any movement or resolution in this wilderness. I have learned, by living through many seasons, that the trees and bushes will turn green in the spring and grow new leaves and extend their roots deeper or wider into the earth. And that the juncos will return to northern climes to hatch their broods. But I have yet to trust that, though I know I am blessed to be a relative to everything that exists, from bacteria to stars, I too will eventually turn in a different direction.

Since I cannot predict how or when, I must learn to rest in uncertainty. My roots, after all, have not yet been torn from the earth. The fact of continual change is all anyone can rely on. It allows us to walk through our wild lives to different places and to create different stances toward ourselves and others than those we harbor at this moment. I stand beside Koo looking out the window… eager but anxious to witness how this winter will unfold.

Margot Fleck lives in Northfield. She lost her husband of 58 years earlier this year.