My Favorite Season

I would like to echo Emily's recently stated (though I forgot exactly where she stated it- I think on her blog) sentiment about autumn- it's my favorite season.
I love it because it's the respite after hot summers- it's like the cool fan blowing on you after you go jogging, like jumping into a pool on a steamy July afternoon.
In comparing the seasons of the year to life, Spring is the beginning, full of new things, new color, new vibrance. Summer is like the young adult years, full ef excitement and travel and fun. Skipping ahead, winter is like old age- slow, cold, a bit dreary sometimes.
But autumn is the Golden Years- it's where Mom and Dad are right now, having lived their Springs and Summers, moving on the point where, like corn or apple farmers, they can look at the harvest of their life's labors and enjoy what they've worked so hard to accomplish.
Autumn feels like home, feels like a family gathered around the living room, sharing inside jokes and stories. Autumn is Thanksgiving and apple harvests and pumpkin patches and fall festivals. Autumn is sitting on the front porch in a swing or rocking chairs, watching the kids jumps into piles of leaves they just spent hours raking up.

Autumn is mellow- not the endless greens of summer or the vibrant bright colors of spring, and it's definitely not the drab white and gray of winter. Autumn is bold colors, bold and vivid, striking the color spectrum with the right chords and rhythyms.

Autumn is a sensory delight- from the smell of wood stoves to the reds, oranges and yellows of the trees (people in the tropics really don't know what they're missing). Autumn is the taste of apple cider or pumpkin pie or turkey and savory stuffing.

Have you ever noticed how clear starry nights in autumn are more clear, more crisp, more sparkly than clear starry nights in summer or spring?

Autumn isn't too warm or too cold, it's just right. Like the feeling when you walk out, on a Saturday morning, and it just hits you: This is a perfect day for football. Or a bonfire. Or a hayride.

I love the first frost in autumn, and how it makes the world into a fantastical place, where everything is made of frosted glass.


Yeah, it's definitely my favorite time of year.

Comments

Tamara said…
although i prefer spring b/c of all the blooming flowers and when birds begin chirping, you sure do make a good argument!
Emily S. said…
I am in Autumn heaven as well. Pumpkin spice hot chocolate, caramel apples, sweaters, burning leaves, gold twilight, kids in costume, football tailgate parties and the sound of marching bands, candy corn.

And on and on...
I am finally coming around to fall - for MANY years, it meant morning sickness. Then, it meant allergies. Now that I am no longer in baby-mode, and thanks to Flonase and Allegra, I am starting to enjoy Fall again. But, I agree with Tamara - spring is definitely my favorite season because I don't have to think about gifts for Easter! And, I love growing things
Julina said…
Another thing I love about fall is the boundless optimism of the first football Saturday in Columbia - even though the football team has, overall, stunk for years (decades?) and there is no reasonable expectation for the current season to be any different, there is just something in the air on that first football Saturday that suggests possibility, that infectious excitement that you can't help but catch even if football isn't your game - the marching band, the (delusional) excited fans, the Mizzou colors all over town... I don't know - there's really nothing quite like it, and it never fails to get my blood going (of course, by nightfall, reality has generally set in and the depression of a losing season usually soon follows...)

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