It’s in the air, can you feel it? Maybe not the last couple of days, but it sneaks up on us. Suddenly as the sun goes down, the bite in the air nips at your warm tan skin and goosebumps blanket your body. You debate whether you should carry a jacket with you when you leave the house. The light changes. The flowers stop blooming and the leaves take on a yellowish hue as suddenly as they appeared as buds on the trees months earlier. Instead of sneaking out a little earlier in the day for a workout to avoid the heat, you might wait till it warms up. Just when you think fall is here, the mercury rises back and you breathe a sigh of relief. Winter isn’t on its way yet, but it threatens. Appreciation and lust for an Indian summer fill your heart, and you break out your shorts for a few fleeting weeks.
(I took these photos last year during fall)
Autumn is a beautiful yet solemn time. Colors become more vibrant and rich, but nature is preparing to rest and take on a more vapid, ashen and achromatic form. The crickets will relinquish their desire to chirp, the cheerful birds fall silent, the assiduous animals and bugs will store for winter before falling still for the frigid, dark winter months.
For me, fall is a time where I long to stop time. I know the trails I spent so much time tirelessly playing and sometimes punishing my soul will be imprisoned under a blanket of heavy, wet snow. Imprisoned, but resting and waiting for life to come back to it with spring thaw.
The snow lovers begin to salivate and stare at their skis and boards when they feel the cooler air. They squirm in their chair as the high temperatures begin to decay what seems to be exponentially. For me, it’s pain. It’s air that will soon claw and pierce my skin as I stubbornly train on my bike through the winter. I can appreciate the beauty of winter, the solitude, the sparkle of the snow, the contrast between black and white, the craving for warmth…
