Orange Season

Autumn. Fall. Call it what you want. But I call it this.

Hot chocolate warming fingers through the mug.

Smelling pumpkin flavoring in almost every store.

The satisfying crunch under your feet.

The mountains rusting into a beautiful orange and red. 

Finally wearing a sweater without feeling like you're about to die from the heat.

Halloween filling yards with cheesy decorations that make the season.

Corn mazes and haunted houses.

Trick-or-treating nostalgia.

Stuffing your face on the fourth Thursday of November, and quickly thinking of something you're grateful for when Grandma asks everyone at the table.

"Um, mashed potatoes?"

Day-dreaming about Christmas.

But still getting irradiated when it's October and Walmart thinks it's December.

The last couple months before it takes looking like and Eskimo to go outside.

The air becoming cool and crisp, reviving your soul with every sharp breath.

Raking leaves and diving into dew filled piles.

The trees making their huge year finale, bursting into fireworks on the branches and letting all their hard work finally be harvested. Giving us a beautiful moment of beauty before the chill of winter robs the world of color.

"He looked from the high window at the land where the crickets were strewn like dried figs in the creek beds, at a sky where birds would wheel south now through the cry of autumn loons and where trees would go up in a great fine burning of color on the steely clouds. Way out in the country tonight he could smell the pumpkins ripening toward the knife and the triangle eye and the singeing candle. Here in town the first few scarves of smoke unwound from chimneys and the faint faraway quaking of iron was the rush of black hard rivers of coal down chutes, building high dark mounds in cellar bins."

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine