Autumn has come.....

Autumn arrived yesterday and the world (well, mine anyway) rejoices!

Fall is my absolute favorite time of year...leaves change color, the air becomes cool and crisp, the smell of woodsmoke begins to fill the air and the days become shorter and the sunlight softer. Goodies like pumpkin bread are now in season and candy corn is available at nearly every store you care to visit.

There's more to fall though than meet the eye....or that I can describe. Its just a feeling of renewal I have every time my season rolls around. The rest of the natural world may be preparing for a long winter and hibernation, but fall is when I find I am not only the happiest, but also the most industrious and alive. I was married on the first day of fall even though it fell on a Wednesday that year (yes, I chose the date deliberately and would happily do so again should the occasion arise).

Its no wonder that my favorite holiday (Halloween) falls during this glorious season and that yellow, orange, green and brown are my favorite colors.

Fall is when I most want to be outside. I want to head out with my blanket and book, lie back and enjoy the peace that nature provides. It is a time of quiet reflection and tranquility, comfortable as a pair of old jeans. It is a season of snuggling into a bed piled high with warm quilts, sitting silent in a room watching the fire burn merrily and sipping a cup of your favorite hot drink or joining friends around a bonfire in the growing twilight, listening to the snap and spark and toasting marshmallows. It is fields of golden amber against a gloriously blue sky, and watching the spread of orange and red across the timberline, spread from the paintbrush of the Master himself. It is mornings of pearly gray fog rising over the lake and skies filled with the V of geese flying south.

Maybe I relish this season more than others because it is so fleeting. Autumn hardly seems to start and then snow is falling and winter takes over...locking us in month after month of brilliant white coldness. Spring melts so slowly into summer that the line between the two is blurred and summer slams you with an unrelenting heat where even your thoughts seem to run together in a melted slurry. Fall sweeps in, her skirts rustling as she dances in her short but sweet turn upon the stage.

I won't quote my favorite poem here as I have already done so in earlier posts but rather leave you with one from George Eliot: "Delicious autumn. My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

Oh that I were a bird! My imagination soars on wings that swoop through hidden valleys and over forests I will never see with human eyes, never forgetting that I am just a girl...one who is utterly and completely in love with Autumn and all it brings.