Chateau Lloyd

I experience a certain amount of sadness when Halloween is over and November comes around.  When I was young, it was the natural denouement of having a bag full of candy after a night of costumed fun.

As I got older, however, I realized that it was also the division between the two phases of autumn.

The first phase is marked by a bite in the evening air, a welcome chill that helps you sleep with the windows open.  The weather is still warm, but the leaves are starting to change and you get that familiar nostalgia for the Good Old Days.  As someone who spent eight years in marching band, early fall has a particular resonance, and I look back with fondness on the anticipation and consummation of the football season.

The second phase, however, is less benign.  The weather worsens, the sky darkens, daylight fades and everything takes on a glum, bare appearance.  Late autumn is truly depressing: brown grass, bare trees, and cold rain.

There is a reason that the onset of winter is actually anticipated in northern climates.  A fresh blanket of snow covers up the drab detritus of the past summer and the soggy ground becomes hard once more.  The time for skiing and sledding is once more at hand, and Christmas is closing in.

But in between, it's a pretty depressing landscape.  That's the part I dread.