Snow on the mountains. I hadn’t expected it yet, but suddenly there it was, brilliant white against the tired grey flanks of the rockies; a marker of the season’s passing. Not surprising that it would come now, at the tail end of September, on one of those exhausted, overcast days that define the transition between fall and winter. All around me sprawled the gritty expanse of the city, stretching itself awkwardly towards the jagged spine of the horizon as if it wanted a closer look at the pristine blanket left there by the receding clouds. I stopped and stared for a moment, feeling the edge to the wind bring a realization that the domineering grasp of winter is much closer than I realized.
I have known for well over a month that summer was over. I’m not sure what it is about the seasons that speaks to me so directly, and especially the fall. Something about the fall resonates deep within me, communicating with me on a level I am not sure I understand. It was sometime during the third week of August that I walked out to the garage to get something and felt the change in the air. It wasn’t subtle at all; more like nature’s equivalent of a brick to the face. In an instant it was painfully apparent. The grass was a little less green than it had been, and the water pooled on the kids’ play structure carried an icy sting that had been absent only days before. The sky now displayed, if only slightly, the telltale grey undertones that speak of a coming change in the weather, and the air, of course, felt different; as though something immense and threatening had turned over somewhere far beyond the horizon, and was starting to wake up. Summer was most definitely over.
Sometimes I feel funny telling people when the change is coming, because the reactions I get vary wildly. Sideways glances, sarcastic nods of the head, or even outright ridicule are not uncommon. It seems that as with so many other things, what cannot be felt firsthand is often dismissed outright as the overactive machinations of an undisciplined mind. Perhaps that is, in fact, the case; but then there is the curious matter of my accuracy. On more than one occasion, I have been laughed at outright when I voiced my feelings about summer coming to an end, only to see the same people shivering a week later beneath the cooling advances of the same autumn they had denied not seven days earlier. Still, I take no satisfaction in being right. It is not a matter of right or wrong, or being to predict something before anyone else; it is more a matter of what simply is.
I guess in the end it doesn’t matter if I know it’s coming or not. It will come just the same, with all the grace of a plane crash. I just find it funny that I feel so tied to this time of year. Maybe it’s because this is when I was born. Maybe it’s because the fall has always seemed to be a time of great transition; the return to school, beginnings and endings of so many friendships, and ultimately leaving home, going to university, and taking those first uncertain steps into adulthood. I have quit jobs, moved from house to house, and struggled through the collapse of serious relationships, and when I look back on the timing, it has seemed to happen, with alarming regularity, in the fall. Then again, maybe this is reading too much into things. Maybe it is, once again, something that simply is.
Looking up today and seeing that sheet of white on the eastern slopes, not glittering in the sunlight, but reposing almost stealthily beneath a grey sheet of cloud, made me wonder what else is just beyond the horizon. What else, when the fall ultimately cedes its tenuous grasp to the relentless advance of winter, will take its place?
