Autumn - The Perfect Season

              Leonard Cohen sang in I Can't Forget, "Summer's almost gone, the winter's tuning up." I suppose that's how most view autumn, a tuneup or interlude between the two great movements of the symphony of the sun.

              What season is your favorite time of year? I've always been a summer man. Tennis, volleyball, hiking, swimming, fishing, cicadas singing at dusk, summer parties, musicians playing at a winery, basking in the sun, church softball. Summer was my time.
              While summer always has the potential to be better than any other time of the year, it always disappoints, it always comes up short of our expectations. The hiking and sports are few and far between, the parties don't last as long as you remembered, encounters never go as you hoped they would, conversations are always shorter than you want. Summer, full of possibilities, full of potential, full of disappointments. Its not that summer is that bad, its that when you are given the possibility of touching the sun, bathing in the light of the moon just doesn't measure up.
              Fall on the other hand doesn't carry expectations with it. Fall has no ties to the past mooring you to disappointment. You float through autumn like a dream, losing track of time. You feel autumn long before you see it. It comes as a whip of wind through the trees carrying with it a smell or sense of the coming days. And then a day comes when the sun feels brighter on your skin as it is contrasted against a crisp blue sky that no longer holds the warmth of days gone by. The smell of smoke on the air, pumpkins on the porch, candles burning in the night, leaves traveling over the landscape, spontaneous parties, reading a book at night, or during the day without feeling guilty you aren't outdoors, tea, hot chocolate, inky black skies bedecked with stars cutting through the dark wave of the firmament. Autumn, the perfect season.