What the Aspen Know: Why September is the Real Beginning

Mt. Abrams (Ouray, CO)

There's a particular morning every year when I step outside in Ouray and the air just feels different. It's still technically summer on the calendar, but the light has changed angle, the aspens up on the mountainside have started their first flush of gold, and there's a crispness in the early hours that wasn't there a week before. It happens fast here, tucked into this box canyon. One day I'm still in sandals, the next I'm digging through the closet for a flannel I forgot I owned. And every year, this shift catches something in me too.

The tourists who filled up Main Street all summer start to thin out. The kids around town are back in backpacks and school shoes. My own household starts leaning back into rhythm and routine after a summer of looser schedules. And somewhere in the hills above town, the marmots and pikas are working overtime, stockpiling for a winter they can feel coming before I can even find my flannel. Nature doesn't wait for a calendar. It reads the light, the air, the angle of the sun, and it starts preparing. And I think we're wired to do the same thing, even if we've gotten pretty good at ignoring the signal. Our culture actually builds in a natural checkpoint, and most of us walk right past it because we've decided the "real" new beginning happens in January.

But look at what's actually happening around us right now. School starts back up, and with it, an entire structure of learning, growth, and forward motion. Parents recalibrate their routines. Businesses shift their attention to closing out the year strong. The wild, loose energy of summer tourist season settles down, and winter's rush hasn't ramped up yet. There's a pocket of quiet here, a genuine in-between, and it's the same pocket the animals are using to prepare.

Kids go back to school to learn. To grow. To be shaped by a new year of experience. So, I keep asking myself, why don't we, as adults, treat this season the same way? Not school in the traditional sense, but an intentional return to learning about ourselves. Who we are. Why we do what we do. What we actually want to shift, develop, or finally look at honestly.

I'll be honest about something I notice every year. I still crave being outside every chance I get, especially on the days when the weather is holding onto that last bit of warmth. Those days feel like a countdown, and I want to soak up every one of them before the snow moves in. But right alongside that, something else starts creeping in that wasn't really there in July - a real pull toward focus. My desk starts calling. My own development work, the reading, the reflecting, the sitting with a client framework until it clicks, starts asking for attention in a way it just doesn't in the thick of summer.

Summer for me is being outside as much as possible. Fall is messier, and honestly, more interesting, because now it's a negotiation. Some days, outside wins. Some days, the desk wins. Most days it's some version of both, and I've come to see that balancing act itself as part of what the season is teaching me. Now I just think of it as my own version of what the marmots are doing. Gathering. Preparing. Turning inward before the deeper cold and the busier season arrive, while still grabbing every bit of sunlight I can get. There's nothing wrong with wanting more structure and more "inside work" right now, right alongside the outside time you still crave. It might just be your nature talking too.

Here's the thing about New Year's resolutions…by the time January rolls around, we're already exhausted. We've just come off weeks of holiday chaos, family dynamics, extra spending, extra socializing, extra everything. We're trying to build new habits from a place of depletion, which is exactly backwards.

September offers something January can't - a runway. If you start doing your own inner work now, when things are naturally slowing down and there's more room to breathe, you get weeks of practice before the holidays even show up. That's weeks of building better habits. Weeks of developing more insight into your own triggers before you're sitting across the table from the relative who always pushes your buttons. Weeks of learning how to hold your own boundaries before the calendar fills up with obligations. Instead of walking into the holidays already frazzled and then trying to "fix yourself" in January, you walk into the holidays with a little more clarity already in your back pocket. And you walk out the other side of the new year not starting from scratch, but continuing something you already have momentum with. If part of what you're craving this fall is more structure, this is a natural place to add it. A coaching relationship right now isn't one more thing piled onto an already busy season. It's the scaffolding that helps you meet the busy season differently.

I want to be clear about something. This isn't about arriving at some fixed, polished version of yourself by New Year's Eve. That's not how real growth works, and honestly, it's not how I coach. This is about curiosity. About getting quietly interested in your own patterns instead of judging them. Why do you tend to overextend yourself once the holidays get close? What is it that actually triggers you at your in-laws' table? What would it look like to feel more aligned, more like yourself, even when everything around you is speeding up?

Alignment isn't a destination. It's a practice of continually checking in and adjusting, the way I check the sky every morning to see what the mountain is doing that day. September just happens to be a beautiful, natural time to start paying that kind of attention to yourself.

One more thing nature teaches me every fall…even hibernation isn't really a solitary act. Animals den up together. They rely on stored resources, on preparation done in community, on systems built before the season demands it. Slowing down and turning inward doesn't mean isolating. It means gathering the right support around you so the season doesn't flatten you. That might look like closer friendships, more honest conversations with your partner, or it might look like bringing in a coach who can walk alongside you while you do this inner work.

You weren't meant to figure all of this out solo, and you definitely weren't meant to wait until January to start. So this year, as the light shifts and the aspens turn and the whole valley starts preparing for what's next, I'd invite you to ask yourself the same question I ask myself every September. What am I gathering right now, and who do I want with me while I do it?

If you're feeling that pull toward more structure, more self-inquiry, or just more support as we head into the busier months, I'd love to talk. This is exactly the season for it.