Autumn

It’s here. Fall. Autumn. The autumnal equinox has arrived. The sun’s journey across the sky sinks slowly toward the south now, little by little each day. Daylight is short and getting shorter. Dawn arrives later; dusk arrives sooner. The autumn sun is still hot but losing its intensity. Brown and yellow leaves litter yards and fill gutters. The day can be warm – even hot – but the nights are chilly – or downright cold – and sometimes there’s frost in the morning.

Today is a chilly, gloomy day, a dreary day. The sky is overcast. Rain fell last night and this morning.

As I was driving home from a doctor appointment, a traffic light stopped me in front of McDonald’s. I looked through my window and saw a hawk soaring above the restaurant, no doubt lifted upward on currents of warm air from the fryalator. That fryalator stays busy. Maybe it was a French fries-lovin’ hawk basking in the rising grease fumes. It’s all part of autumn.

I haven’t turned on the heat yet. Well, that’s not quite true. I turned on the boiler for two nights when the temperature was forecast to hit freezing. I wasn’t cold; that’s not why I turned on the heat. I was a little paranoid about frozen pipes. I turned on the boiler so that the radiator pipes would warm the crawlspace. It was an abundance of caution type of thing. It’s still too early in the season to seriously worry about frozen pipes.

The overnight temperature is supposed to hit 37° F tonight; the high tomorrow is supposed to reach 55°. But in 3 or 4 days the high will be back to 70° and the low will be 50°. Autumn can’t decide whether it wants to be the end of summer or the beginning of winter.

Autumn is nature tapping you on the shoulder and whispering in your ear: “Get ready, cold whether is around the corner.” Autumn is your reminder to finish your outside jobs. Paint that board on your house; wash your car; put up weather-stripping; seal the air leaks around that window air conditioner.

Autumn is the season for outdoor parties, for sitting with friends on hay bales around a bonfire, browning hot dogs and marshmallows, talking and laughing until someone leans back too far and does a slow motion roll right off their perch, and just generally having more fun than is natural.

Autumn is the remembrance of long ago high school football games, and trees with fiery colors, and outdoor walks wearing long johns under your jeans and a hoody zipped up over your shirt. Autumn is hot chili and pumpkin pie, and switching from iced tea to hot cocoa, and herbal tea at bedtime.

Autumn is Nature pretending to die so that, come Springtime, it can be reborn, revived, resurrected. In this way, Nature speaks to us. If we listen, if we hear, we may understand something very important about our own reality.

Or perhaps it’s not important at all.