Katie’s Musings: Autumn

Without question, my favorite season of the year is the autumn.

I suppose this might harken back to my days in the upstate New York/New England area, where autumn is less a season and more an event (apple picking is practically a sport in them parts), but my love of autumn remains.  The slight chill in the air that you can feel if you stand just so in the shade. Crunchy leaves that appear underfoot as you go about your day.  A vaguely crisp smell that wafts through the air under your nose, like apples and pine and spice all mixed up together.

I totally confess to a bit of an autumn pumpkin spice addiction.  Yes, I’m one of THOSE people – give me all the pumpkin spice things.  Candles, coffee, scents, scones… give me all the pumpkin spice things! I love them!

And WE GET TO WEAR LAYERS AGAIN!  Oh yes, autumn clothing is the best!  Hoodies and sweatshirts get dug back out from their summer homes in the backs of closets.  Boots come back, too, and tights and leggings and jeggings, OH MY!  Colors become richer, lipstick becomes darker, and what has been bright switches to more brilliant in tone.  OH, and jackets.  There is nothing so wonderful as a well-fitted jacket in the fall.  Coats are always cumbersome, but that autumn, in-between time jacket is the best.

Actually I think that’s why I love about the autumn the most – it’s an ‘in-between time.’  Not quite summer, not quite fall.  Not quite humid, not quite frigid.  The leaves are still on the trees, they’re just a different color, still some warmer days but they become fewer and farther between, until they give way all together, stepping aside for the cold of winter.  Autumn is the calm before the storm, the harbinger of what’s coming, the preparation for a new way of being.

See people think spring is the time of new beginnings, but I humbly have to disagree.  Because the by-product of “in-between times” like autumn is always reinvention.  Reordering.  Recreation.  In-between times lend themselves to reinvention because they generally reside smack in the middle of “what has been” and “what could be.”  And “what could be” always holds great possibility.  Kids go back to school in the autumn and find themselves in an entirely new mode of operation, a new routine and schedule, with all the possibility that goes along with it.  Reinvention becomes possible through that in-between-ness.

And nothing is quite so catching as possibility and reinvention!
I hope you catch it, too!

Happy Autumn!  If you need me, I’ll be the one frolicking in the leaves, dressed head-to-toe in autumn colors, and of course, drinking Pumpkin Spice Latte