Fall Fever

I have lived in North America more than half my life and yet, every year, late September and early October, I begin to feel almost breathless in anticipation of Fall. Every year late in October, at least here in these parts, it is as if Mother Nature holds out her skirts to say: Look, what a pretty dress I have!

Drifts of leaves mound up wherever they find a little lee from the winds. The sky is a clear and brilliant blue: Carolina Blue I call it. Clouds, fat, white, and lazy, drift across the skies, and they take such a forever to get anywhere that it gives one the impression that time, if it hasn’t actually come to a standstill, is about to. Every moment becomes an eternity. I have a theory about this I’ll tell you. When I hear a piece of music or see a work of art, and if it seems to slow time down, I tell myself: Now this is Art! That is how I feel about it. Fall, like Art, stretches life out like a rubber band. Makes one last longer.

The air carries the odor of leaf-mold and mulch. A million leaves launch with every breath of wind, and the air is filled with their rustlings and susurrations. This is the music of Fall. And above all else there is this prodigious burst of color I love to distraction. One can hardly stay indoors. How much color! How many shades! Where from? What infinite abundance! If there is anything Mother Nature has it is so much of everything!