Race of the falling leaves

I've used so many superlatives to try and explain what Autumn is for me ,yet I've always failed as its just impossible. Robert Frost does it much better, even James Lee Burke has gotten it down adequately on paper. I thought it was the smells, the air, the warmth, the wind direction, the harvests, the ploughing, the onset of something harsh in the atmosphere....But its all those and none. Because Autumn is a frame of mind. And this year we've been steeped in luck to watch the crab-apples grow to imitate small turnips, to wear shorts into October, to cycle our bikes always wearing too much. I'm not going to bother describing anymore, theres no point in trying to paint you a picture of peach and yellow jet-stream cloud at dusk, of kids playing 'til dark in the yard or the onset of ink-like night in seconds. The swallows have left, the bats have had their bellyfuls. Sunday saw the rain arrive and the wind rise, the last race of the season in Oylegate, a quick goodbye 'til the days lengthen again. The oil trucks are about, smoke rises steeply and woodsmoke or bark resin is filling noses in every neighbourhood. Autumn is my New Year's. You can say what you want but nothing really changes over 31st December/ 1st January except the intensity of your hangover. Its still bloody cold out, the car is covered in a rime of frost, gym workouts, fad diets, even lifting your ass off a couch is alien to the conditions. No, the Fall is where its at. I like to go INTO the depths of Winter in a mindset of change. I don't want to batten down the hatches...I want to throw them wide open, breathe in that turned-earth smell, drink the beetroot juice that tastes like it came out of the ground because it did, or eat a windfall apple as I watch the kids kicking a rich store of leaves. I loved racing on Sunday, book-ended with 40 kms of banter, loved chatting to the people that made the 2015 cycling season a pleasure to be part of. Autumn changes everything and changes nothing but it's the pivotal season of the year for me. "THERE CAME THIS DAY AND HE WAS AUTUMN, HIS MOUTH WAS WIDE AND RED AS A SUNSET, AND HIS TAIL WAS AN ICICLE" Ted Hughes