Happy first full day of autumn! It’s time to put another summer to bed.

Every September, I tell myself not to fear summer – I’m practically in the country now, with grass and fields and woods and open sky – but then the next summer rolls around, and again I am loathe to go outside, thanks to the ingrained terror of more than 30 years of blistering Philadelphia torment. I used to love summer when I was a kid. I never experienced a moment of dread anticipating the heat. I didn’t even look at the weather. If it got too hot, I played in the woods or went tubing, and at night I set up a box fan on a desk at the foot of my bed. Now, I basically hop from one air conditioned space to another – and I don’t like air conditioning either!

Ah, but next year will be different…

For now, it is the third week of September, and the most invigorating season is upon us! Autumn, soon to ripen on a vine of concerts and book sales and sweaters and hot drinks enjoyed outside, heavenly pie and black-and-white monster movies. The next two months are the high points of the year for me. Until Thanksgiving. Then it’s all downhill until January 2nd – at which point, I delude myself, things will be quiet again, and I can enjoy my solitary pursuits until spring. But there’s always something niggling in the atmosphere that tells me spring is coming, and the harbingers are invariably sooner than I anticipate. Spring announces itself early and then takes forever to get on with it. Eliot was right: April really is the cruelest month.

But enough of seasonal anxiety. For now, autumn is upon us! I think today I’ll dive right in and go for a morning walk in the woods, and then this afternoon I’ll make my first batch of vegetarian chili. I suppose, somewhere along the way, I’ll need to get some work done too. But the walk will help me think. If I’m not borne away by sprites!