Autumnal Equinox

You couldn't ask for a more beautiful day to kick off Autumn. Sunny and cool, the air full of the anticipation of Fall, I'm transported back to my childhood.

These were the days of pumpkins and Indian corn, of cornucopia and anticipation of what October would bring. Soon we would begin coloring Jack O' Lanterns and planning our costumes for trick-or-treating. There would be bags of candy from which we could choose ONE piece. The rest must be saved for Halloween visitors.

It was time to learn about harvest, of golden haystacks, time to anticipate the changing colors of the leaves. We would collect them for class projects and try to replicate their colors with crayons of orange, yellow and red. To this day the colors of the Fall palette are my favorite.

Soon the morning dew would be replaced with frost-- jackets in the morning but shirtsleeves in the afternoon. I remember rushing home from school to change into play-clothes to make the most of shortening afternoons. To play until dusk meant keeping up with sweaters, which would invariably end up lost, hanging on some neighborhood back fence. Evenings would grow cooler, filled with the aroma of the first hearth-fires of the season.

And now, that imperceptible something, whispering through the leaves, calls me forward as much as it calls me back. The Fall somehow always seems more full of promise than any other time of year, even Springtime. Like the ticking of the eternal clock calling geese to take wing and the heart to beat faster in the breast of the stag, it-- whatever "it" is comes upon us again. My heart, like that of the stag, beats faster in anticipation.