Turn, Turn, Turn

A late start, a long day and an overcast sky filled with rain found me walking home in a contemplative mood this evening.  Sodium lighting reflected off the rain slick street while traffic lights painted the pavement neon red and green and a cool, clean bite in the air nipped at my nose.  Autumn has arrived, furtively, like a thief stealing in the back door.

I love this time of year.  In truth, I love a lot of the year.  High summer evenings of endless light and deep midwinter mornings of hard packed frozen ground both make me smile quietly and step that little livelier.  But it is the cusps of the seasons that I really enjoy.  The first crocus flowering, a splash of colour amidst slumbering grass as winter gives way to spring.  That first, hot day of summer when you look up at the trees and realise that the world has gone green while your back was turned.  The first day when your breath prickles in your lungs as winter bites.

None of them, however, are as good as autumn.

Pick Me.

Maybe it's the brambles, dark and rich and as redolent of childhood as any madeleine.  Fleeting and free (both literally and metaphorically), I can't resist stopping and snaffling a few from any bush I pass.  I find it odd that other town dwellers don't do this.  (And I know I'm not the only one who wonders at this.)

Or maybe it's that other treasure of the autumn woods, the conker.  Is there anything better than the anticipation of splitting open that spiky shell, wondering if there will be that single, perfect nut within?

I always think this colour should be called pastel gold. 

Or perhaps it's neither of those.  Perhaps it's the long, sinuous light that spills across the countryside, turning straw into gold and painting the sky with pastel metals.

Or is it that autumn is a slightly bitter-sweet season?  A last hurrah before the quiescence of winter?  A sense of huddling up against the storms to come, of making good and mending before the chill seeps into our bones.  Of endings to come, as leaves turn and fall and the daylight shrinks away, ceding mastery of the world to the cold, sparkling night.

Maybe it's all of that, and more.  The smell of humus (one "m") as your feet crunch through fallen leaves.  The infuriating day when it is too hot in the sun and too cold in the shade.  The sudden downpour driven sideways by the wind.  Everything.

Hello, Autumn.  Welcome back.  I've missed you.