Autumn Is Three Seasons in One
Spring is about new growth, summer about sun and warmth, winter about snow. And autumn? Autumn is the season of the senses—the sounds that carry through chill air, the golden light aslant, and the smells, those wonderful acrid smells, that waft on the breeze. Autumn is a vibe, warm and cool at once, and while every season is our favorite season, fall might be the most favorite of all.
We love a good migration, and we love a good back-to-school migration best.
Goodbye, brown talcum powder. Goodbye, loose, sketchy corners and skittering descents, one finger nervously feathering the brake lever. Catch ya next summer, wheel-snatching ruts like little sandstone canyons begging for a trip to busted-collar-bone-town. And a hearty hello to that sweet tack-tack-tacky that blooms after the first rain. Great to see ya, berms that can finally hold our screaming, wildly irresponsible lines. We missed ya, hero dirt. Great to have you back.
It’s the best time in the desert, period. See you in Indian Creek, Red Rocks, Joshua Tree, Chiracahuas, La Paz, Baboquivari, Chesler Park, White Sands, the Hayduke Trail…
The last two weeks of September: warm days, chilly nights, a chance of Indian summer. The last two weeks of October: chilly days, cold nights, pack a fleece. The last two weeks of November: cold days, cold nights, bring the puffy, there’s a chance of skiing, and, huzzah, the nine days of Thanksgiving week.
The old scoundrel spends his summers lurking behind the sun, then come late August starts to rise a little before dawn, heralding the arrival of a new season and climbing toward his inescapable presence in the winter sky. Orion slides through fall as he always does, in eternal pursuit of the seven sisters of the Pleiades. Fortunately, the distance between them remains forever unbridged, the stout bovine presence of Taurus between them, just in case.
A hot soak in cool air? Chef’s kiss.
A summer thunderstorm is like a tantrum, an autumn tempest is like a grudge. It sneaks up, a bruise on the horizon, blown on galloping winds, and brings a frisson of danger to your little afternoon jaunt. Will it be hail? Fat drops in the forty-degree air? You do not want to be cold and wet when the sun goes down at five. Race you home!
Would you like a side of salmon with your salmon? Great! Would you like to super-size your meal, too? Cool frijoles! Every October, seen through the webcams of Explore.org, we get to celebrate the finest of nature’s spectacles, the all-you-can-eat buffet on the Brooks River in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. As they catch fish and stock up for hibernation, brown bears can grow from eight hundred pounds to twelve hundred. Begun in 2014, the National Park Service’s single-elimination online Fat Bear Week tournament has drawn millions of voters and created legends such as 747 and four-time champ Otis. In 2024, the aptly named Chunk scarfed forty-two salmon in ten hours but it wasn’t enough to topple Grazer, the crowd-favorite female, who squashed her rival for the second year in a row.
That Children of the Corn rattle through dead brush on a solo ride…the sure sound of footfalls behind you on a trail run…that sense of being watched by something in the woods. Mothman? Chupacabra? Some people pay to watch scary movies. All you need to do is go for a two-hour adventure an hour before sunset and leave the headlamp at home. You’re right, that isn’t just a bare branch, it’s a skeletal arm reaching out to grab you…
Leaves, leaves, everywhere leaves, hangin’ from the trees, carpeting the ground, crunching underfoot, their job done, time for leafy starfishing and shivasana, except, except, except—when a gust of wind blows through a stand of aspens and thousands take flight, like butterfly wings or a firefly glow caught on scraps of paper, amber flakes flickering and floating and freeriding against a background of blue.
Do we need an excuse to linger in front of the campfire on a chilly autumn morning by the lake? We do not. Nevertheless, we’ll have seconds of those thick pumpkin pancakes slathered in butter and syrup, thank you very much. It’s autumn on a plate.
Shorts season is nice but you know what’s even better? Shorts and sweater season. When the atmosphere holds that razor-thin difference separating warm from cold. Crisp, clear as a bell, not a molecule out of place, distant hills and valleys and forests sharply rendered, like how eagles must see. The air carrying the scent of far away rain and smoke and leaves rotting and earth ripening and the last grassy smells of summer and…change. Jackets and pants soon, but not today, not yet.
It’s said squirrels forget half the nuts they stash away during their frantic fall harvests. Maybe it’s more than half. Nobody knows, really. It’s easy to see why, watching them running amok on forest floors and city parks, stuffing their cheeks, then, once underground, the larder. Hunkering down, warmed in the chilling air by the knowledge there’s plenty of food, they’re not so different than us, really.
Petrichor, the name for the pungent scent after rain falls on dry earth, translates roughly to “blood of life from a stone” in ancient Greek. It was given that name in 1964 by Australian researchers, who, aside from their expertise at sciencing, knew something about branding, too: Before “petrichor,” this delectible aroma was known as “argillaceous odor.” Oof. Thankfully, we now have a word as resonant as its piquant perfume.
At first, it feels like something is misplaced, a subtle sensation that something’s changed. The sunlight—it’s moved. Just yesterday it shone directly from overhead, but today it’s oblique. Enchanted, somehow. A little softer, a little warmer, the shadows longer. It’s easy to forget we’re living on a spherical rock racing around a ball of white-hot gas, until you step outside one day and reality itself has shifted ever so slightly, casting the world in the warm, romantic light of poets, impressionists, and plein air painters.
Is that a whale spout? It is! And wait, there’s another one. And another one over there, and more all the way to the horizon. It’s the fall migration of twenty thousand gray whales, swimming and spouting five thousand miles south along the west coast of North America from the Arctic to warmer waters off Baja California. We’d join them if we could. We have the blubber. If only we had flukes.
The ancient Egyptians painted renderings of their gods yellow to resemble gold. Yellow ochre was one of the first pigments used to create art. The color provokes positivity, enthusiasm, hope, and self-assurance. It cheers the soul and lifts the mood. It sparks energy and stimulates decision-making. From time immemorial, it has symbolized the sun, so perhaps, as green leaves transition to burnt orange and autumn light strikes just so, these yellows—the cadmiums, the lemons, the chromes—are a way of reflecting back to Sol and honoring the radiance from which all life stems.
It’s not just the material world of Gore-Tex and Cordura and fleece and carbon fiber and leather. Our gear is also a repository of memories, a cache of thrills, adventure, doubt, camaraderie, fear, and fun. Pulling a dusty bin of winter clothes and gear out of the garage after a long, hot summer is like digging through a time capsule of winters past, one that’s begging to add more memories.
Just when you think camping can’t get any cozier—it’s late afternoon, the air is cooling, a warm fire is crackling, you’re plopped in a camp chair, legs and arms limp from the day’s hike—a pure jolt of autumn crackles through the air. The sound of a roaring crowd, the smack of a wood bat against a leather ball. Your camp neighbor just turned the World Series broadcast on the car radio. You grab a beer from the cooler with one hand, sink deeper into the chair, the sun setting over a distant peak—”…and there’s a deep drive to center…”—and all is right with the world.
Do you wait for darkness to fall before building your campfire? Wait no more.
One is mournful, like a cow’s moo but imbued with a plaintive urge. The other, a piercing, electric bugling, a slide whistle played through a megaphone. If you live in the rural West, you know these unmistakable sounds of autumn as stag deer (the moo) and bull elk (the whistling) call out to the ladies during rutting season. For a viscerally wild moment, cup your hands to your mouth, let loose, and join in. Play your cards right, you just might make a confused (and amorous) four-legged friend.
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