The globe was kept high on a shelf, away from small grabby fingers and curious hands. Once per year, the man would take it down to show the children what he kept inside. A gnarled oak tree dressed in oranges, reds, and yellows. A pile of loose leaves scattered around the dry, yellow grass below. He shook the globe just once and the leaves on the ground flew and floated in the orb, gently drifting back down into a pile.
The young-uns would giggle and cheer, rushing out his door to see the old oak tree on the hill with a new pile of shorn leaves.
The man put the globe back on its shelf next to its siblings: one covered in white powder frigid to the touch, another with scattered petals of color with a few hidden eggs in the bright green bushes, and the last with sand and a sun dangling ever so delicately from a fishing line. Each with its name embossed in the copper nameplates on their wooden bases and as pristine as when he first placed them on the shelf. It would be some time before he’d take down the next globe, enough moments for the children to romp and play in the colors of fall and the last of the dallying harvest to be brought in.
This season was the moment to breathe and see the changes happening around. Everything that was bedding down to drift to sleep, the hunkering down for the coming freeze and snow, but not quite yet. It is a time for remembering all the good that came with the year and enjoy the family that is near to heart. A time for the warm winds to turn cold and crisp with the gentle smell of snow on the way.
A moment frozen in time within the globe, as the time approaches for the old man to shake the next globe. He’d take down the next and, with a shake, the hill outside would be white, clean, and bright with a blanket of snow. The world outside his workshop would sleep until the next globe had its turn.
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