Welcome to October

The first day of October always brings with it a sense of excitement, of wonderment. I feel a crispness in the air, a spice of adventures waiting in piles of leaves and cobbwebby forgotten places full of dust and shadow. I want to wrap up in warm clothes and go running out into the cooling air, whoop with glee in the random gusts of wind that shake dying leaves from branches. I want to wander through falling forests till my toes and fingers are almost too cold to move anymore, then return home to a hot cup of cocoa or tea, nose and cheeks red and eyes shining bright - a preview of jack-o-lanterns grinning right around the corner.

I want to stuff gloved hands into deep warm pockets and hunch my shoulders against that constant chilling breeze that slips below the collar of coat and shirt. I want to breathe out and see that breath steam, misty white, in a fading smoke-life puff in front of me.

I'm not ready for snow yet, or heavy hurried rains and thunder. I'm not ready for woodstoves and heaters and storing away the flip flops for next year. I'm not ready for no-sun, for no-more-warm-days. I'm not ready for winter, per se. I'm ready for October, that cooling darkening deepening snuggling-in - that sneaky uneasy beautiful calm before the storm.

Ray Bradbury, one of my most favoritest authors, described it well in the introduction to his collection of short stories, The October Country:

"... that country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose poeple passing at night on the empty walks sounds like rain ..."

He was describing his own world of stories and thoughts; the place he goes to or that comes to him where all those wonderful tales and characters are alive and well and bidding him come out to play. It's the October Country, and on the first day of October of each year, I find myself wondering if maybe that's where I really came from, and if Mama Wren simply took me in when I wandered a bit too far from those foggy hills and misty rivers, into the world of here and now. Because I am an autumn person, and I think autumn thoughts. Or maybe, just maybe, Mama Wren's from there too; October always seems to get under her skin as well.

It's a good time for long walks and hot drinks and cats and books and - yes - kites, too, to shiver and dance in the misty wind. It's a time for photographs and family and grandfather clocks chiming in shadows that have more substance - more life - now than at any other time of year. It's a time for remembering, and discovering.

It's a time for sneaking away - from work, from school, from chores and errands - just to get out for a minute and see, and breathe.

Welcome to October, friends, and to the October Country. May your journey be a long one, a good and spice-edged, warm in the chilliness, wind-racing one, and may you find in hills of fog a bit of childhood and memory.