Now that summer is officially coming to a close—where I live, about 6:30 pm on Thursday, September 22—I’m getting a little down. The light fades faster in the evenings and is slower to arrive in the mornings. Nights seem to last a little longer than I’d like. Trees start to look sort of tired, their bright green exhaling from their leaves, yet not quite turning into brilliant hues, not for another couple of weeks yet. I do love the gorgeous colors of fall in New England, and the way the cold sets in on misty mornings, and the crystal clear blue-sky days we get so much more often here than where I grew up in western Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh is notorious for having many more cloudy than sunny days in a given year and a clear blue sky was a rare thing. But summer lasted longer. I miss that.
In New England it seems like people actually get depressed more often about the end of summer. Further south and west I just don’t think that’s the case. My childhood memories of fall were always associated with a sense of relief. I still have that residual feeling but along with it comes that awareness, so common in these parts, that the winter may bring a lot of extended cold and bitterness. This is why people say, “We’re moving to Virginia—we can’t take the winters anymore.” I never thought the winters were that bad here. Try northern sections of New Hampshire or Maine—or Canada, for that matter—for a little more severity and darkness, and a spring that doesn’t seem to arrive at all until June.
But then, move further south, and you get those ever-strengthening hurricanes. I’m tracking them constantly now on the various weather Web sites, worrying about where they’ll make landfall, how severe they’ll be this time. Philippe out in the ocean appears to pose no threat to the continental US, although because I’m a weather freak, I sort of wish that storm would come a little closer and tease us instead of being pushed away by some cold front. Rita on the other hand is barreling her way powerfully through the Florida Keys as I write this. While I love the sun and the warmer weather, I can’t say I think it’s worth it to have to put up with repeated and worsening hurricanes for half the year.