We all piled in the van last night (for once, ahead of schedule) and set out for church. As opposed to the usual dawdling-induced mad dash, this time I could actually drive the posted speed limit without worrying about being ten minutes late, and that's when I noticed it.
It's fall.
Oh, sure--there's the ceremonial post-Labor Day autumn where I have to hang up my seersucker suit and wrap the white bucks in tissue, but that's never really seemed like fall. And now that the kids go back to school in the middle of August, there's not the old back-to-school-fall-feeling anymore. And it's not the calendrical fall, because there are still days when the temperature outside your body is nearly the same as that on the inside. It might say September on the calendar, and that the equinox is coming on the 22nd, but it's still hot as July.
But there is that light. That late afternoon light, angling low down through the trees. The road we take to church is semi-rural, and winds through several hollows and over several ridges, and there's that dapple of light that looks almost like it's cutting up through the trees, then in a moment you pass a clearing and see that deep blue sky--the kind of blue you see when the humidity has finally eased off enough so the sky's not white with haze. Then you are just as suddenly plunged back into a shadow, and you look over to the side and see one golden shaft of light on what would otherwise be nothing more than a house trailer or someone's brush pile, and it looks like light coming through a cathedral window.
The sycamores have begun to give up for the year, and the evergrowing kudzu has finally slowed down and started to turn brown. It's almost sad, but they get lit up in the late afternoon sun, too, and it's difficult to imagine how anything can look any prettier. It provokes an odd sense in me, something like when you have one of those warm vivid dreams you have when you're taking a short nap--a precursor to the long deep sleep to come later when winter finally eases in.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at September 8, 2005 10:47 AMI'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that sudden tumbler-like click inside when fall happens. It's almost exactly as you described it; the light is just different, the humidity is down, and from then on, it's fall. Even if it's only late August, and never mind how much more summer-like weather ensues. It's fall.
It's the strangest thing, and I've always thought it was primarily the light's quality that tripped the switch.
Maybe it's some primeval instinct left over?
Whatever, it creates a bitter-sweet moment.
Posted by: James, LOPM etc. at September 8, 2005 07:45 PMTerry, buddy- Likek's has got nothing on you when you wax poetic as you did in this post. Its beautiful...
Posted by: Nate at September 9, 2005 09:16 AMWell, thanks guys--every once in a while the spirit moves me.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 9, 2005 10:19 AMFor as many years as I can remember I had this feeling about the late september light a kind of softness suffused with a mellow warmth . I did not know it was an universal experience though !
Posted by: vivek thakur at September 22, 2005 04:33 AM