Days 9 and 13: my favorite part of fall and a menagerie of photos to boot...

Autumn. I love it. I don’t love it the way some people love summer or winter or spring, loving it because it gives me nicer weather or skiing or vacations. I love it because it makes me giddy. I love it when the leaves skitter down the sidewalk like scared cats and the trees chuckle their response, tossing down more deceased foliage for amusement. I love the slight breezes and the way the cold crisp mornings smell clean. I hate the way summer comes back in the afternoons, too hot for the leggings and sweaters that I so desperately adore. I crumple up happily at the odor of musty leaves and sigh deeply when the bitter, tantalized odor of coffee wafts into my nose…the same nose that I bury deeply between scarves and aviators.

I love the way autumn sinks into winter, the black hole of seasons. Foliage turns from green to must to yellow to red to brown and then disappears altogether under white snow. The warm summer days get nippy in the mornings, then that cold begins to stretch long fingers deeper under the skin of the day, until I can wear my jacket when I walk to my car after work, and then eventually I need a coat because let’s be honest, forty-five degrees is just too cold for only a sweater.

I love the ache that comes with the anticipation. The waiting for that day when you finally realize its only forty-four days until Thanksgiving (which is, according to the Sami Calendar, National FOOD Day) and only sixty days until my birthday and only seventy three days until Christmas (which is Second National FOOD Day).  This gets me thinking about Christmas shopping, and I’ll let you in on a little secret: the best Christmas shopping is done in autumn. Creative juices aren’t so frozen then, prices are just a little lower, and everything is a bit more open as far as gift options go. Yes, the anticipation for these days and then after that, spring.

I love autumn because it is the calm before the storm, the beauty before destruction. It is the gray hairs among the black, the silver strands. It is the sunset before the night. The happy ending before the next adventure. It is the fuel before the long journey. The midnight snack because heaven knows that we wouldn’t make it to the morning without that fridge-light-flooded search for something to put us back to sleep. It is the reward because we’ve made it this far through the year.

I love autumn because it is the beginning of the trail that leads to my self. It is alluring, calling to me: fall into me. Fall into autumn’s embrace, which will be enveloped by winter, which will be buried in cold and then from this death spring will arise and there will be new life. I love autumn because I relate to it. It says get rid of the unneeded, for a new journey begins. Dwell not too long in one mindset, but seek newness and freshness always, learning from the past and pressing forward into the future to try out newly acquired knowledge. Be new, be rewarded, be you.

This is why I love this season. It falls into autumn into December into me.