Here in the mountains of northern New Mexico, October feels like the world exhales after the long heat of summer. The air shifts. The light changes. The mountains take on that deep, quiet glow as the days grow shorter, and the sun hangs lower and weaker in the sky.
But the real magic, for me, is in the aspens.
By October, they’ve turned into towering columns of gold. Whole mountainsides shimmer as if they’ve been brushed with light. When the wind moves through them, the leaves shake and flicker like tiny bells, soft, bright, and alive. No matter how hard of a month I’m having, no matter what wave of withdrawal or fatigue I’m riding, those aspens remind me that beauty is always here. Change can be painful, but it can also be breathtaking.
October is also home to my favorite holiday… Halloween. Not the loud, commercial version, but the older feeling underneath it, the sense that the world grows thinner, more mysterious, more intimate. The nights feel sacred. The wind carries a different kind of whisper. The whole month feels like a doorway between what has been and what is yet to come.
The animals seem to feel it too. Ravens fly their looping paths over the mountains with a different purpose. Squirrels and small birds bustle through the underbrush, storing what they can before the first real cold arrives. Everything in nature is preparing, slowing, settling. There’s a calmness to their rhythms that I often try to follow myself.
Maybe that’s why October feels so grounding to me. It’s a month of transition, but not the frantic kind. It’s a gentle turning inward. A reminder that we can shed what we no longer need and prepare for the quiet, healing months ahead.
Even on days like today, when the wave hits hard, when I’m exhausted and heavy in mind and body, just thinking of October brings me a bit of peace. A memory of golden leaves, cool air, and a world softening into stillness.
That’s why October is my favorite. It feels like home. It feels like a breath I can finally release.
~Buck
Whispering Wyrd 
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