Autumn can have so many different meanings. A time of harvest and abundance; a time of storing and saving for the long winter season ahead. A time of festivity and reunion. Like every season, autumn has its unique events and sights, sounds and smells. Here are a few of our favorites …
Jack Frost. Halloween. The Great Pumpkin. Thanksgiving. Pilgrim Fathers and Native rescuers. Homecoming and reunion. Indian summer. Two, maybe three Indian corn. Blackberry canes. Fall Back. The State Fair. Oktoberfest. Cornucopia overflowing. Pickling, canning, drying…and nibbling as you work.
The kick-off. First and ten. The Big Game. Let’s Go… Touchdown! A marching band echoing the school fight song from a jammed stadium. The Quarterback Club. The last round of 18. The Turkey Trot. Running through crispy fallen leaves.
Washing windows and stacking lawn furniture. Rakes and snow shovels moving up in status in the shed. Pulling in the boats and repairs to the dock. Rhythmic thwacks of ax through wood; mechanical buzz and whine of chain saws. Mulching, pruning, planting bulbs. The last lawn mow — hurray!
Packing summer clothes. Unpacking the winter ones. No whites after Labor Day. Shorts weather, jacket weather, sweater weather, great coat weather, then boots and parkas. Smell of moth balls and cedar chests. A cuddly warm sweater and thick warm socks.
The taste of hot cider while sitting by a fire. A turkey roasting through the afternoon. Hot apple pie. The hubbub of the Farmer’s Market on a crisp Saturday morning. People making their way across golden brown acreage. Large, round mums. Caramel apples on a stick.
The hazy, cloudless skies of Indian summer. Leaves scurrying down the street before the wind. The cold shiver from an arctic blast. Indian summer. The last warmth of the sun. Chilly mornings and glorious warm afternoons. The Harvest Moon. The Hunter’s Moon. The Rainy Season. Dry corn stalks clattering in the wind. The touch of frost on grass and window pane. The smell of burning leaves.
Warm winds from the south, coat-tightening blasts from the north. Pleasant breeze, cooling wind, chilling gale. The edgy-ness of distant storms brewing. The first flurries of snow, the first white ground cover. Get the shovels ready!
A Vee of geese honking their goodbyes to the land. Birds flocking, numbering in the hundreds…then no longer seen. Wasps and bees drunkenly flitting from fallen fruit to fermented fallen fruit. Squirrels gathering their cache, scurrying from here to there to here. Crows, cardinals, jays and assorted little brown birds, lonely calls wondering where everyone went.
Lake fish diving deeper to the stable bottom waters. Caterpillars feasting on the last of the summer bounty before drifting into a transforming beauty sleep. Flies clustering in barns and attics, seeking the last warm spot away from the winds of winter.
But most of all, autumn means colored leaves: a spectrum of shades between the green shades of summer and the dull browns of winter. Crimson, fiery red, maroon, ruddy orange, pure orange, yellow orange, soft yellows and bright yellows. Red maples, yellow birch, scarlet sycamores, aspen gelds. Mottled leaves of several colors in transition. Each deciduous tree, each bush, strutting its own autumn wardrobe. Naked willows dancing in the wind. In their midst, the smug conifers stand. “Evergreen,” they say to us, “ever green.”
Ahhh, those bright autumn spells that bring out the most vivid of hues. Days so delightful you can almost taste the color. And those cold, crisp nights when the air has its own special vintage to entice us back outdoors one last time. A bouquet matched in no other season — aged in Northern realms and blended just right.
We just love a good season, watching it turn, engendering days of joy and days of melancholy. Sorry, must go. Adventure is lurking outside!