[Laredo]

Those are some evocative images.

I love the fireplace smoke on a cool night, too.

A little one that I've come to enjoy is that first time you sit on a bench or other concrete object outside and it's cooler than you are; it feels as though sitting too long will sap the heat right out of your whole body.

In a similar vein, that first time you walk out of the sun's light and feel a chill in the shade.

There's an...anger...in the atmosphere when it's hot. The heat in the air, which might feel so appealing in the spring, becomes a constant assault on the soul by July. The days are so fiery that there's no relief at night, no respite. I've come to embrace this season, however, as it's the beginning of my favorite time of year. In the scathing and raw inferno of summer, such things as early Halloween merchandise on the shelves and carving a watermelon-o-lantern fly in the face of the heat boring into your happiness. Further, it also serves as the passageway to Fall. Sometimes, a day comes when the temperature drops 30 degrees from a cold front, and the angry heat never recovers its full strength. Other times, it's more subtle, and you find yourself outside on an evening realizing that the heat, like an old toothache, a pain by which you've been held hostage for so long, has quietly, mysteriously...vanished. The world is calm. The anger is gone. You can breathe again.

And then about 3 weeks later, you start seeing the stinking ads for the cruise lines and resorts, hawking opportunities to "get away from the cold dreary weather". Jeeze, folks.

 

[Laredo]

Thanks, PTG. This topic grabbed me. Fall is just...home.

 

[Laredo]

Thanks, Dipped. These posts are all great. Gothikren and Exported, I love the heating and A/C related items you mentioned. That burning dust smell, and the way my parents' old furnace used to wind up. It would make these building groans like a waking beast, while blowing cool air. After a few moments of this, the warmer air would start flowing and the sound would even out. I remember as a kid getting up and sitting in front of the heater grille with a cup of coffee and watching tv on weekend mornings. That's more of a winter thing for me, but late fall saw those mornings as well.

I forgot about the lack of heating or A/C when the temperature is perfect in the Autumn. That's another indication that Fall is the natural state of things: with the windows open, instead of the sound of hot or cold air being blown through the house, you simply hear...the world, life, whatever is around you.

Those hot, hearty, and heavy meals that you wouldn't attempt in the summer, for fear of adding heat, in wholesale quantities, to a house already smothering. In the Fall, they welcome you home from school, filling the cooler and quieter house with the aromas of colorful casseroles and rich stews.

Of course, the pigskin. Those football jack-o-lanterns were a brilliant way to celebrate the place football holds in the arrival of Fall. Friday night-Monday night, if I'm not careful, I could watch it all, but my heart's really in the games on Saturday. Before I was old enough to know much about solar angles and seasonal variations, I realized that when we went outside to toss the football around in the yard as kids, you could always lose the ball in the southern sky, because of the sun's lower position in the sky. The types of shadows we get in the Fall, their length and orientation, give the season away as well.

Anything outside. Walks in the woods, rainy fall nights, standing in an icy trout stream surrounded by color, sometimes even by trout.

I just went over to the EasterForum website's thread on spring and said all the same stuff in reverse.

 

[Laredo]

So it's September now. All of my favorite months end in "ber". The high here yesterday was 76 and it was tasty.

 

[Laredo]

That mostly healthy panic has set in. The Halloween decorations in stores are almost starting to overwhelm my ability to keep up. I'm looking at my calendar and seeing the fun stuff stack up to the end of the year and already there are few holes in the schedule between holidays, haunts, gatherings, and football. Autumn is rolling in like a massive steam locomotive and I'm standing in awe and a little panic in front of it. College football starts for me on Saturday at the pub that some of my relatives converted half of their garage into and where we watch football games and have festive get-togethers. Three days in a row of temps not reaching into the 80s.

The rest of the year is a fluffy and silly time valuable mainly in preparing for Autumn. The only negative about Fall is the worry that I'm not enjoying it to the fullest. I usually do not fall prey to this, as the sense of regret at having done so in the past has fuelled me to make sure that I do all I can to enjoy my favorite season.

Back to that calendar, with a shoehorn and a pencil.

 

[Laredo]

Autumn is coming in just over an hour. It's been cool and cloudy and rainy here which is atypical for Oklahoma this time of year. Things mentioned in this thread's early posts are arriving now. Happy Autumn!

 

[Laredo]

Well, actually, for me, Fall begins on July 5, and I'm sure there's like a clown Fall or something that starts in may, but I was referring to the AUTUMNAL EQUINOX which is in 8 minutes.

Happy Autumn!