After long and careful deliberation

I've decided that autumn is my favorite season.

Winter's nice, spring is lovely, and summer is awesome, but I love autumn. Most currently significant is the fact that autumn brings the end of hurricane season (November 30th). I just love that everything just slows down in autumn so we can rest between the vacations of summer and the business surrounding Christmas. Our summer burns start to heal. We start to plan for Christmas. Put away the grill, bring out the fire pit. We go from mowing the lawn to raking it and cooling the home to heating it. And Halloween -I love living in a subdivision if for no other reason than the fact that there are tons of adorable children that come up to my house trick-or-treating. And try as Drew might to cut my budget for Halloween, I give the good stuff. No Dum-Dums or Smarties coming from this house. And Thanksgiving - who doesn't love it? Food, food, and more food - oh, and spending time with family.

I think what I love most about autumn is that first cool breeze. I especially loved it this year because it's been a banner summer for heat. You know what I'm talking about, you're sitting outside, gardening, pulling on a beer, working on a car, playing with the kids... whatever it is you do outside, and all of a sudden the wind picks up and you can detect that wind being about 10 degrees cooler than the wind you've felt all summer, if in fact, you've had the blessing of living somewhere where there's wind in summer. I LOVE that breeze, because I love autumn.

Take heed: In the following paragraph I discuss something I found positive about growing up part-time in Indiana. Normally, I spread no love about the place, but this will be a significant insight into the genesis of my love for autumn. I just want y'all to notice that every once in a while, I say something nice about Indiana.

Indiana is one of the most beautiful places in the country to be during autumn and I am blessed to have lived there if only (okay, only) for the experience of Indiana in autumn. The colors are just stunning, and I cannot express this sentiment strongly enough to express how beautiful it is. The yellows, the reds, the oranges, the browns... all in hues so rich and awe-inspiring that only the hand of God could have created them. There were several creeks near my house (oh, and the Ohio River) and seeing the firy hues of the trees covering and being reflected by the water was simply amazing. In the oblivion of childhood and the apathy of adolescence, I never fully appreciated fall in Indiana. I do have one memory I hope to never lose of walking home and looking up the hill towards my house and seeing the awesome colors of the trees just as the wind blew and for once in my indifference-riddled teenage years, my breath was taken away. I'm quite sure now that that moment was one of my first experiences with God and I have since recognized the fact that there is no color that man could produce with any computer that God Himself has not already placed in nature. I can't wait to take Drew there during the fall (probably not this one) and build huge leaf piles so my kids can jump in them.

Here are some pictures that will give you a little glimpse of what I'm talking about.

October 2004
Scenes from cabins in Brown County
Fall Creek Gorge, Warren County
Potato Creek State Park
Stuff to do in Indiana in the fall, more pictures at the bottom

Now if autumn could hurry up and be over so hurricane season would pass...