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Thursday, October 20, 2011

My Favorite Time of Year

I feel a deep sense of sorrow for all of those people in the world who have never experienced a Northeastern autumn. There is something positively magical about this time of year in New York (and New Jersey, and Vermont, and Massachusetts, and all of those other states points north). It's as if one morning you wake up and everything in the world is suddenly crystal clear. The air is crisp. It smells sweet and spicy. The sky is bright blue (on those special days when it's not raining). And the whole world looks like it's on fire.

I've always loved autumn. It means running around in the backyard, raking leaves into piles to jump into, carving pumpkins, consuming a metric ton of apples, apple cider of the mulled variety, crunching through the leaves that have fallen from the trees. The sound they make underfoot is one of my favorite sounds in the world. The smell of them gently decaying is one of my favorite smells. The way the air feels, just like an apple when you bite into it (fresh off the tree, of course)... favorite, favorite, favorite.

I love being able to carefully take out my heavier clothes and coats, my arm warmers, fingerless gloves, scarves, the hat I occasionally wear. I love layering everything and giving shrift to the colors of the season in what I wear. I adore Halloween and all that that entails - pumpkins, candles, candy, costumes, and the inevitable feeling that the veil is thin and there are spirits walking the earth with us.

And I love the sense of autumn that I have that is just indescribable. Autumn is all of these things to me, but it is something more, too, something that I've never been able to put into words but is an impression on my heart of colors and smells and tastes and memories and comfort and warmth. I can't say it any more clearly. It is just amazing, and wonderful, and awesome, and the best feeling in the world.

I wish autumn lasted all year long, I really do. But then, I suppose I wouldn't appreciate it quite as much if it did. For now, I will have to content myself with my beautiful walk home, and to work, where I wander under glowing trees dropping silent, colorful leaves to the sidewalk. And Sunday, I will pick a hundred apples and eat fifty and turn the rest into pies and revel in the smell of cinnamon-sugar baking.

Happy Autumn, all!