Fall is almost here. I can smell it coming on the wind. The morning air is just a little warmer than brisk. The days are still warm, but the leaves are beginning to mottle with yellow and orange
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Wow. I've always wanted to explain to people why autumn was my favourite season, but I certainly never managed it as well as you have. Nicely done.
My second fave season is winter, but that's because winter has its own set of smells and sights which are very surreal. Some of my most profound memories are of walking home at night in winter, sniffing at the cold moist air. There'd be not a lick of traffic and nobody else around. The landscape would stand on its own, still and silent and strangely bright with sodium lamps reflecting off snow to create an orange and blue still-life. Somehow, that environment is like a petri dish for creativity in my head.
Of course, once home it would be a different side to winter. The whole family would be there, and the cold orange from outside would give way to warm yellow incandescent light. That has more direct memories of holiday celebrations (whatever holidays those might be!) and television watched together, perhaps movies or videogames, but rarely alone.
Winter has polarity. Either you're starkly alone, or you're figuratively snuggling for warmth with people you love. The contrast between the cold outside and the warm inside is greater. The smells, and the sounds... yeah, winter is a very close second to autumn for me.
I think I'd be fonder of winter if I'd grown up in a place where we got proper snow. It snowed in Arkansas occasionally, sometimes (rarely) as much as a foot or more. Mostly, though, we got ice storms, which, while lovely, are also nasty. You can't go out. You can't go anywhere. Even WALKING outside is treacherous. I still have a nasty scar on my hand from falling while carrying a glass bottle one Christmas Eve day. I was walking to my friend's house, and decided just to keep going rather than turn back, my hand wreathed in blood, leaving a spattered trail of red behind me and attracting drivers to pull over and ask if I needed to be taken to the hospital. Mmm... attention. Anyway, while the glass worlds of ice storms are just unbelievably gorgeous, they quickly fade to your normal Arkansas winter, which is one of the most dreary things you can imagine -- the skies are flat and grey and featureless for weeks on end, and there's a perpetual drizzle. It's like living in a giant, leaky, concrete basement. You start to go stir crazy.
My second fave season is winter, but that's because winter has its own set of smells and sights which are very surreal. Some of my most profound memories are of walking home at night in winter, sniffing at the cold moist air. There'd be not a lick of traffic and nobody else around. The landscape would stand on its own, still and silent and strangely bright with sodium lamps reflecting off snow to create an orange and blue still-life. Somehow, that environment is like a petri dish for creativity in my head.
Of course, once home it would be a different side to winter. The whole family would be there, and the cold orange from outside would give way to warm yellow incandescent light. That has more direct memories of holiday celebrations (whatever holidays those might be!) and television watched together, perhaps movies or videogames, but rarely alone.
Winter has polarity. Either you're starkly alone, or you're figuratively snuggling for warmth with people you love. The contrast between the cold outside and the warm inside is greater. The smells, and the sounds... yeah, winter is a very close second to autumn for me.
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