By Chris Warren
Mother Nature’s tease.
There are just a few days left in September. Summer officially ended on either August 31 or September 22, depending on what standard one uses. Regardless of technicalities, in the Great Lakes state where I live, that means any weather that could plausibly be classified as “summer” is rapidly diminishing. We may hit an occasional hot day between now and Halloween, but that’s just a tease. Fall is a subtle spirit that quietly crawls into our lives; for those who love summer it is a part of the cycle of hope and patience.
Daylight is fading.
Fall is a mercurial season to us upper Midwesterners because it randomly flips between warm and cool, wet and dry. It’s a time of the year when one might need to use the furnace and air conditioner on the same day. The trees are still green but a few leaves begin to trickle down. Little by little, almost imperceptibly, the signs accelerate. I have to carefully monitor the weather in advance if I want to ride my motorcycle. One cannot just assume it’s going to be warm and dry.
Many of us who thrive in the heat and extra hours of daylight are foolishly rationalizing that it’s not over yet even as the sun sets a little sooner each evening, rises a little later each morning, and “shorts and T-shirt” weather turns into “jeans and hoodie” weather.
The cognitive dissonance I must inflict on myself to accept the meteorologic reality happening outside my wishful-thinking brain is breathtaking. Then one morning, any delusions I was clinging to about “we still have some summer left” are busted. The dew that used to form overnight is now frost. In less than thirty days, by the middle of October, The Quiet Crawl has ended. Fall has indisputably arrived full force and even the most optimistic summer-worshippers must concede.
The psychiatry of the seasons.
Fall is the most schizophrenic season. Constantly flipping through weather extremes, like an untreated psychiatric patient it never gets better, only worse. It’s never certain what you’ll get; summer-lovers only know every day will be lesser than the last. Spring is schizophrenic too, but in the case of Spring each day progressively improves. Yes, there will be days that feel like a step back into January, but we know the end of spring will be better than the beginning. Fall affords us no such comfort. For their part, Summer and Winter are neutral. There’s not a lot of variation and you know what to expect. But Fall is terminal decline. The weather gets colder and darker until it becomes a full-blown case of Winter.
Fall plants seeds of gratitude.
Even as much as I hate to see summer pass, fall does serve an important purpose: It makes me grateful for summer. Isn’t it a natural feeling to appreciate more that which we cannot have all the time? Spring is the default season of renewal and planting, but from where I sit as one who loves summer, the real season of renewal is fall. The disappointment of fall forces me to reflect on the previous summer and plant hope that next summer will be fulfilling and positive. Although the fulfillment is delayed, it is the catalyst forcing me to better appreciate what I can’t always have.
In the next week or two I will prepare my motorcycles for a long winter pause and roll them into storage; throwing a tarp over them will probably be the last I see of them until spring. I’ve been doing this ritual every year for the last forty years. That day is never a good day for me. But my hope, and what encourages me, is the converse of that day: another ritual I’ve also performed annually for forty years.
That other ritual arrives every spring, usually around mid-March. I pull the tarps off and check over my motorcycles to make sure they are mechanically good to go. Then comes the moment I’ve waited months over the winter for: Roll them out of hibernation, hit the start button and feel a rush of awesome wash over me when the engines pop to life. I slip on my helmet, which has also been lonely and idle for months. Then I disappear down the road on my two wheels of pure joy, appreciating it more because The Quiet Crawl of Fall, only temporarily, took it away from me.
