I think that summer is over. This revelation is a bit of a dissapointment, especially because I had a lot of great plans for summer-related posts here at Sticks and Snakes. Too bad. I loved summer in Omaha, which was a huge surpise because I usually hate the heat. This year I ate up the high temperatures and I even got a tan. I felt like my body was soaking up every ounce of vitamin D that it lost in the last cruel winter, sweating out all of that snow-related depression. But now there is a crisp chill in the air and the leaves are turning colors. The last time I tried to sit outside in the sun and read I was bitten by all these tiny, weird bugs. The jig is up.
In Nebraska, you feel the seasons on y0ur skin instead of marking them on the calander, an existential shift that I am still adjusting to. In the Bay Area, it pretty much felt like early spring all the time. You could always count on wearing a scarf in San Francisco, but you could also keep the same wardrobe all year 'round. Out here, though, the seasons are real, which is actually a great (though sometimes mournful) way to mark time. Not ready for summer to be over? Too bad says the smell of the wind. Suck it up.
Like most things, I like the changing seasons because of the synapse-snapping memories that come alive in scents and sounds. This season--the very particular Midwestern version of this season--reminds me of the first time I arrived in Omaha, as an intern in the fall of 2005. So much has happened since then, and yet the air smells the same. This is the time of year when I like buying coffee at gas stations early in the morning because that is what you do on cross-country road trips. Maybe I just really need to go on a road trip.