Fall In Love

       Autumn is the most romantic season. Many will sight spring as the ultimate time of year for love in the air, but not me. Especially since I don’t like the spring. Spring for me is Limbo. It’s too warm to snow anymore (and I’m a snow junkie), but it’s not warm enough to go to the beach. It rains a lot, and mud is omnipresent. And look, I’m not complaining. Nor am I trying to put the kibosh on anybody’s love affair with spring. If you dig that season, more power to you and your daffodils. I’m just not into that time of year. But I digress.
       The romance of Fall in New England starts with the explosion of color that makes my heart sing. Scream, actually. The entire landscape comes alive with a most fiery palette. Autumn means weekend road trips to the mountains with your lover to immerse yourselves in the foliage. It's the first time of year you light a fire, and fire is a symbol of passion, of ignition. At some point, you make love in front of the flames, stoking your own burning heart for the person you’re with. That works for me.
       Fall means All Things Pumpkin. And pumpkins are just the coolest veggies going (even though they're technically a fruit). They’re big, bright, unique looking, and each one seems to have its own personality. I can’t say that about peppers. Or oranges for that matter. What other fruit or vegetable so defines a season? Pumpkins are to autumn what Santa Claus is to Christmas: a mythical symbol that embodies everything that’s magic about a particular time of year. Pumpkin hunting, pumpkin carving, pumpkin tossing, pumpkin coffee, pumpkin pie, pumpkin everything. I can’t get enough of them.
       By October, the holidays are right around the corner, starting with Halloween. And I love any ritual where you get to put on a costume and act weirder than normal. Girls in tight leggings and high boots come out of the preverbial woodwork, and man, is that sexy. The air is cool and crisp, yet, there is a particular loving warmth in it, a palpable comforting spirit.
       Summer is all about heat and sunshine, about spending as much time outside as you possibly can. Thus, summer is all about putting yourself out there, almost to the edge of being outside yourself. And now, fall is the start of a sweet embrace. Of yourself. Of who you are, and of of what you love. Of the people you love. It’s a time of year that encourages us to go within, and to spend as much time inside ourselves as we do in the great outdoors. Fall to me is like a big giant metaphysical hug from the universe that invites us to wrap ourselves around our own spirit, our own lives, and around the people in our life who really matter to us. That’s part of why I love the fall so much.
       That and all the pumpkins.


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