We are not really saying good-bye to summer, of course. In recent years, I have seen temperatures in the 70s well into December. Still, the light has been shifting for weeks now, and this past weekend we got our first breath of fresh air with a Saturday that was cool(er) and breezy. I think nearly any place could feel like heaven in those conditions.
As it was, we spent part of the morning walking around a nearby lake, which was good enough. Blue skies, water rippled by light wind, enough people out to convey a sense of connection, not so many that we wanted to be somewhere else instead. For some reason, though, this particular lake makes us think and talk about being in other places: Maine, North Carolina, Montana, Europe. What if…? What if…?
By the end of the walk, with kids growing restless more likely from late-morning hunger than weariness, we are content to head home, rather than overseas, and be semi-productive for the rest of the day.
Since then, some humidity has crept back in, but not at the stifling levels felt throughout most of the summer. And now, with meteorological fall upon us, there is a more prolonged respite from the heat to look forward to — one I’ll bemoan in February but eagerly welcome as it arrives. I have little interest in anything pumpkin-spiced, but I will take the cool fall air any day. A 2011 New York Times article described stepping outside on one particular summer day as comparable to “being licked by a giant swampy monster.” That is precisely I’ve come to think of the sultry summer days in the D.C. suburbs.
I have seen and heard the season’s first flock of geese flying overhead. Change is upon us. If summer is childhood’s freedom, I declare autumn to be the parent’s, not because of a return to school, but because of the ease with which we might traipse about outdoors, the delight in the color show we will watch in the trees, and the deliberate turning inward to family and cozy comforts.