After months and months of summer, fall arrived in a single week. I had my AC on not that long ago and now I have to close my windows because it’s getting too cold in my apartment. And yet we’ve got temperatures in the seventies coming up next week [or in a day or two, as this post goes up]. It has been an absolutely wild Fall, so far, and I’m reminded of that Spring from a few years ago where we went from cold, wet, and snowy to hot and humid in a week and a half in May. We had exactly one week of Spring after a very long Winter and then went straight to Summer. Sure, we’ve had more Fall than that already, and it looks like we’re going to have plenty more as the temperatures change up and down (which is usually a sign that most of the heat it coming from the sun rather than from the weather and prevailing winds), but it was a rather drastic shift to go from weather routinely in the high seventies and eighties that rarely dropped into the fifties to weather dropping below freezing and barely breaking out of the fifties for a few days at a time. It looks like, finally, a couple weeks into October, Fall is here to stay.
Continue readingFall
Fall Has Finally Fallen Over Wisconsin
After what felt like a never-ending summer (I’ve been wearing shorts and flipflops non-stop since I-don’t-even-know-when last spring, but it was easily five months ago since I made the change before my friends’ wedding), fall has finally arrived. It feels odd to see the leaves already making substantial progress give most nights haven’t dropped below the mid-sixties until very recently, but there have been enough cooler days that they maybe got the program. Or maybe they’re trying to provide an example since it feels like the temperature is following the leaves rather than the other way around. I mean, it is actually fall now, on the calendar, so it’s been weird seeing summer stick around as long as it has (with a significant resurgence in the last days of September and first days of October). Normally we’d have had a week or two of cooler days and many cooler nights by this point, but the day I’m writing this is the first time I’ve thought about leaving my windows open all day since it won’t get warm enough to wish I’d turned the AC on at any point in the next few days. Sure, it might wind up warmer inside than I keep the AC at, but I only keep it there so my home is cool at night and so my bedroom is cool enough for me to sleep easily when I go to bed rather than knowing I’ll have to resign myself to a sweaty hour or two before it finishes cooling down since I turned the air on after I got home from work.
Continue readingThe Changing Season Through My Window
After what felt like a lifetime, summer has ended. Fall is here in all its bright, colorful glory. The trees have begun to change from the pale, warm, or emerald greens of summer to the various browns, scarlet reds, muted yellows, and eye-catching oranges of Fall. It is a slow process, where I live, striking seemingly at random rather than in the calm orderly manner the trees displayed when coming to life in the spring. Different trees of the same type begin to change in their own time, content to merely overlap instead of coordinate. Spots of red appear at random and the giant green tree outside my window has four parallel streaks of orange in it, like Fall somehow passed by and rent the summer from its boughs with massive claws. Already the parking lot fills with fallen leaves and the summer heat fades into the haphazard warmth and chill of the changing season. It has been barely four months since the trees finally tore free from winter’s grasp and I find myself wondering if that is part of the reason so many branches stayed bare this year.
Continue readingFall
Dawn in Fall is my favorite time of day.
The soft, warm colors paint the sky
As I clear the sleep stains from my mind
And my eyes gradually adjust
To take in the waking world.
The crisp chill air fills me as wind blows
The orange and pink splattered clouds
From one horizon to another.
Dusk in Fall is my favorite time of day.
The bright colors of late afternoon
Drain from the sky as my work worn eyes
Slowly adjust to the fading light
And my exhausted mind stirs anew.
The smoke scented air hangs heavy and cool
While heavy cold blues appear, descending
Until day has stilled and night reigns above.
The start of Fall is my favorite time of year.
The memory of heat and humidity lingers
Like a sheen of sweat on your forearms
And even the heavy frost of frozen mornings
Is a welcome reprieve from the cloying summer.
The quiet skitter of leaves on breeze
As the world begins to fall asleep
Lets me know that I can finally find peace.
The end of Fall is my favorite time of year.
The advent of snow and blistering cold
Wakes my mind like a dip in a frozen lake
Because there’s something in the failing fall
That tells me it is time to start moving.
The heavy weather gives me something
To push against as my mind roars a challenge
At the quietly dying world,
As if to say “Not me.”
“Never me.”