Fall

Images: Leonard Basobas

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Published in 1923, Robert Frost's Nothing Gold Can Stay is perhaps his most famous work. It captures the transitory and fleeting nature of not only the autumnal season, but of an idyllic vision of life.

The fall is unquestionably my favorite of the four seasons [or for some, three seasons, wedged right in between "construction" and winter].


I cannot say for certain whether my love of the autumn stems more from the briskness of air that alerts my senses or the vibrancy of color that emblazons my mind. Perhaps, it is both accompanied by all that the fall engenders.

The rustling of fallen leaves beneath your feet or against your body as you dive into a pile, the blaze of color that brightens the surroundings even on the most overcast of days, the smell of burning leaf piles...

Harvesting, apple picking, pumpkin picking...

The tinge of cold on your nose and cheeks as you pick up speed on your ride, the indecisiveness of using a gillet, arm and leg warmers or breaking out a full jacket and knickers, the weekly mud dance we know as cyclocross...

This weekend most likely marks the peak of color change for those in the most southern parts of the northern climes, so make sure you take it all in before fall of leaf gives way to fall of snowflake.