Autumn steps in quietly, yet it always feels like turning of a page in a book I have read before and still love..I notice it first in the mornings. I rise a shade earlier, just to see the pale glow stretch across the floorboards. Even the kettle’s whistle sounds more patient. I put on socks that remember the shape of my feet and stand by the window for a moment, letting the cool air touch my cheeks while coffee warms my hands. Breakfast slows down, too. I don’t make a ceremony of it, I only make space.

But this year, I want to carry autumn differently. I want to notice not only what changes around me, but what stays in my hands when I walk through it. I have always slipped little things into my pockets: a leaf, a coin of smooth bark, a note folded and forgotten. They are not precious, yet when I find them later,

they remind me: I was here.

I walked through this day.

I paid attention.

So I will make it a ritual. Each walk, I’ll let myself pick up one small artifact, an acorn, a feather, a leaf with an odd vein of red. I’ll invite my friends to join me, to show me what they collect in their own pockets. Maybe they’ll bring something tender, maybe something silly. I love how autumn can be funny too, like when a friend once pulled from her coat a bright candy wrapper that she swore looked like a fallen petal. Together, we’ll turn the familiar search for autumn leaves into something playful, into a little archive of the season’s gifts.

At home, I’ll tip them into a bowl by the door. Happiness of the days, scent of the walks, proof that life continues in gentle drafts rather than final forms. Around it, I’ll build the soft corners of my home: a cardigan waiting on the chair, a lamp casting its warmth across the table, branches in a vase, apples in a bowl. None of it is rare, but all of it is kind.

I have begun to believe that every leaf that lands at my feet carries a sign: of rebirth, of reconnection, of chapters turning. Each season writes its own book, and even the most similar days can never be quite the same- that is the quiet beauty of life. Summer is not lost, only rearranged, each season is another beginning, another way to bloom. And when I slip a leaf between the pages of a book, or find an acorn at the bottom of my bag weeks later, I remember: change can be tender. Pockets carry stories, and in their small evidence I find a way to carry the season itself, without losing myself in it.

The more I live with these little rituals, the more I feel the rhythm of the year under my skin. Trees let go, roots reach down, the light becomes more deliberate. Change is not a failure of summer. It is the next true thing. And when I slip a leaf between the pages of a book, or find an acorn at the bottom of my bag weeks later, I remember: change can be tender. Pockets carry stories, and in their small evidence I find a way to carry the season itself, without losing myself in it.

Perhaps years from now, I’ll open a drawer and discover one of these artifacts, a pressed leaf, a smooth stone, a feather and it will bring me back to this autumn, to the way I carried it. Just like this, the year turns.

Text by

ARTEFACTS