Category Archives: Cool weather

On an endless winter

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Winter is a strange season. I look forward to the cool weather all summer. As a child I would get up every morning hoping for that first snow which might fall in the dark of night while all were asleep. The cold weather and snow would eventually show up, much to my delight, but by the first of March most everyone, including myself, would be tired of winter coats and boots, gloves and scarves, hats and mittens, our shielding from the icy cold of winter. One expects January and February to be ugly. That's just the way it is in Minnesota in winter, but March is a different matter entirely, wildly unpredictable, windy, stormy, cold, warm, wet, muddy--a mess. It might warm up in March, but only to make you weep later when the winds of a St. Patrick's Day storm blow cruelly across the plains. April is usually when things turn warm. Yes, you might get a little snow, but when the sun shines in April, the temperatures go up, the grass turns green, and the dandelions come out. Birds sing, the lilacs smell wonderful, and the trees begin to leaf out. This is a normal April: people get their gardens ready, the snow finally melts in the shadowy places, and people begin to put away the winter stuff. Going out without a jacket is pure pleasure, the snow is gone, and when precipitation falls, it isn't frozen anymore. This is a normal April. The endless winter of 2013 has had the people of the midwest in chains for quite some time, adding insult to injury by dumping a foot of snow on the midwest on May 2nd. Winter just got ridiculous. It isn't that I have never seen snow in May, but not a foot. When I was sixteen, I saw a couple of slushy inches fall on May 4th, but they were gone by noon, and that year had not been particularly problematic in terms of cold or snow. This year, the year that will be known as the year spring never arrived, has been the year of the endless winter. April has been brutal with a continuous string of snowfalls that have tested both the patience and the humor of the people in the Midwest. The winds have been icy, the snow deep, you can't even see the grass, and trees are as bare now as they were by the end of November. The snow shoveling people have been over the moon, making money hand over fist. Cities have used up their supplies of sand and salt, and don't have money for more. Snowplowing budgets have long since been in the red, and then a blizzard hit the central plains again, this time on the second day of May. Spring is now about a month and a half behind. The farmers are concerned about getting in their crops. Local high school baseball teams have been playing in the gym. Tennis players look longingly at snow-clogged courts and think whimsical thoughts of playing in the sun with sweat dripping down their faces. The grass, plastered under the snow, is brown and dormant, the dandelions are no where to be found. The normally warm, sunny air of May still blows mean and cold, the winter jackets hang wearily from the shoulders of the pale riders of daily life in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Colorado and Kansas, the Dakotas, Iowa. These people, who normally can tolerate a lot of bad weather, are weary, tired of the constant storms, the ice, the huge piles of snow. For now, the gardens go unplanted, prom goers must wear overcoats, slipping and sliding over the ice as they go to dance. The ravages of winter still litter the landscape, no trees have bloomed out, the corn crop is unplanted, and the white-tail deer are beginning to wonder if summer will ever come. In the meantime, the people begin to clear away the snow, again.

On an endless winter

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Winter is a strange season. I look forward to the cool weather all summer. As a child I would get up every morning hoping for that first snow which might fall in the dark of night while all were asleep. The cold weather and snow would eventually show up, much to my delight, but by the first of March most everyone, including myself, would be tired of winter coats and boots, gloves and scarves, hats and mittens, our shielding from the icy cold of winter. One expects January and February to be ugly. That's just the way it is in Minnesota in winter, but March is a different matter entirely, wildly unpredictable, windy, stormy, cold, warm, wet, muddy--a mess. It might warm up in March, but only to make you weep later when the winds of a St. Patrick's Day storm blow cruelly across the plains. April is usually when things turn warm. Yes, you might get a little snow, but when the sun shines in April, the temperatures go up, the grass turns green, and the dandelions come out. Birds sing, the lilacs smell wonderful, and the trees begin to leaf out. This is a normal April: people get their gardens ready, the snow finally melts in the shadowy places, and people begin to put away the winter stuff. Going out without a jacket is pure pleasure, the snow is gone, and when precipitation falls, it isn't frozen anymore. This is a normal April. The endless winter of 2013 has had the people of the midwest in chains for quite some time, adding insult to injury by dumping a foot of snow on the midwest on May 2nd. Winter just got ridiculous. It isn't that I have never seen snow in May, but not a foot. When I was sixteen, I saw a couple of slushy inches fall on May 4th, but they were gone by noon, and that year had not been particularly problematic in terms of cold or snow. This year, the year that will be known as the year spring never arrived, has been the year of the endless winter. April has been brutal with a continuous string of snowfalls that have tested both the patience and the humor of the people in the Midwest. The winds have been icy, the snow deep, you can't even see the grass, and trees are as bare now as they were by the end of November. The snow shoveling people have been over the moon, making money hand over fist. Cities have used up their supplies of sand and salt, and don't have money for more. Snowplowing budgets have long since been in the red, and then a blizzard hit the central plains again, this time on the second day of May. Spring is now about a month and a half behind. The farmers are concerned about getting in their crops. Local high school baseball teams have been playing in the gym. Tennis players look longingly at snow-clogged courts and think whimsical thoughts of playing in the sun with sweat dripping down their faces. The grass, plastered under the snow, is brown and dormant, the dandelions are no where to be found. The normally warm, sunny air of May still blows mean and cold, the winter jackets hang wearily from the shoulders of the pale riders of daily life in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Colorado and Kansas, the Dakotas, Iowa. These people, who normally can tolerate a lot of bad weather, are weary, tired of the constant storms, the ice, the huge piles of snow. For now, the gardens go unplanted, prom goers must wear overcoats, slipping and sliding over the ice as they go to dance. The ravages of winter still litter the landscape, no trees have bloomed out, the corn crop is unplanted, and the white-tail deer are beginning to wonder if summer will ever come. In the meantime, the people begin to clear away the snow, again.

On the wind

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The wind is not your friend. The wind has been blowing with quite a bit of force in central Texas, whipping up brush fires, dust, dirt, and tumble weeds. I walked for nearly an hour yesterday in a stiff breeze that was blowing from the east. In Spain they say the wind can drive you mad if you let it. They even gave it a name, the "Tramontana." While I lived in Minnesota, I always feared a sharp "tramontana" because on a cold day, it could be quite lethal. The still air temperature could often be rather reasonable, but a stiff north breeze at 20 to 30 miles per hour could make being outside a really rough business. Yet the wind is blind, blows on the just and the unjust alike, causing a person to zip up their jacket, raise their collar, and stuff their hands into their pockets. I've seen perfectly beautiful days ruined by a strong wind that blows everything around, ruins your picnic, brings rain to the parade, drives a gentle snow into a horizontal frenzy, whips up deadly whitecaps on the lake. Strong winds will ruin a perfectly good run, turning it into a torturous exercise in pain, endurance, and will. Sometimes you cannot put on enough clothing to blot out the effects of a cold north wind that started off somewhere in Ontario and is making a clean sweep of the central plains. Evil winds will wreck your garden, drop hail on your unsuspecting head, ruin your kite flying aspirations, ground your flight to Chicago, and tear the roof off of your garage. High winds were the bane of medieval cathedral architects who were worried about their new high structures--cathedral walls make great sails, which is unintentional, but it could be fatal. Today, architects play with all sorts of strange shapes in an attempt to minimize wind damage and baffle mother nature just long enough so she won't blow down their buildings. The wind is, of course, a natural by-product of an active atmosphere of a spinning planet as high pressure chases low pressure, seeking to release energy and go to entropy. The problem is that human beings are trying to live in the middle of all this active energy, which can be either good or bad. Good if you are sailing or drying laundry, maybe flying a kite, but bad if you are running into it and have a mile or more to go before you can change direction. The wind can blow a truck off a road, tip over trees, cause cars to fly, break windows, scatter your lawn furniture. Yet, what is more comforting than a light breeze on a warm summer night? Is there anything more comforting than the rustle of a breeze blowing through the tree tops at the end of a summer day? Wind is, however, about disorder and chaos, out of which very little good ever comes. Disorder and chaos speak to our inability to control anything at all. Control is an illusion that the wind has come to destroy. We transfer our own insecurities about life onto metaphors involving the wind because the wind seems to exemplify all that is fragile and ephemeral in life. The wind comes and goes without explanation, much like Fortune itself, which is as inexplicable and as arbitrary as a light summer breeze that might cool your sweaty brow and give comfort to your tired bones. Just as the wind can bring destruction and tragedy, it might also bring a cooling breeze that lightens the heart and give hope to the soul. What we cannot predict, ever, is when and where the wind might blow, whether it is an ill-wind or a gentle breeze, whether we will have to zip up or open a window.

On the wind

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The wind is not your friend. The wind has been blowing with quite a bit of force in central Texas, whipping up brush fires, dust, dirt, and tumble weeds. I walked for nearly an hour yesterday in a stiff breeze that was blowing from the east. In Spain they say the wind can drive you mad if you let it. They even gave it a name, the "Tramontana." While I lived in Minnesota, I always feared a sharp "tramontana" because on a cold day, it could be quite lethal. The still air temperature could often be rather reasonable, but a stiff north breeze at 20 to 30 miles per hour could make being outside a really rough business. Yet the wind is blind, blows on the just and the unjust alike, causing a person to zip up their jacket, raise their collar, and stuff their hands into their pockets. I've seen perfectly beautiful days ruined by a strong wind that blows everything around, ruins your picnic, brings rain to the parade, drives a gentle snow into a horizontal frenzy, whips up deadly whitecaps on the lake. Strong winds will ruin a perfectly good run, turning it into a torturous exercise in pain, endurance, and will. Sometimes you cannot put on enough clothing to blot out the effects of a cold north wind that started off somewhere in Ontario and is making a clean sweep of the central plains. Evil winds will wreck your garden, drop hail on your unsuspecting head, ruin your kite flying aspirations, ground your flight to Chicago, and tear the roof off of your garage. High winds were the bane of medieval cathedral architects who were worried about their new high structures--cathedral walls make great sails, which is unintentional, but it could be fatal. Today, architects play with all sorts of strange shapes in an attempt to minimize wind damage and baffle mother nature just long enough so she won't blow down their buildings. The wind is, of course, a natural by-product of an active atmosphere of a spinning planet as high pressure chases low pressure, seeking to release energy and go to entropy. The problem is that human beings are trying to live in the middle of all this active energy, which can be either good or bad. Good if you are sailing or drying laundry, maybe flying a kite, but bad if you are running into it and have a mile or more to go before you can change direction. The wind can blow a truck off a road, tip over trees, cause cars to fly, break windows, scatter your lawn furniture. Yet, what is more comforting than a light breeze on a warm summer night? Is there anything more comforting than the rustle of a breeze blowing through the tree tops at the end of a summer day? Wind is, however, about disorder and chaos, out of which very little good ever comes. Disorder and chaos speak to our inability to control anything at all. Control is an illusion that the wind has come to destroy. We transfer our own insecurities about life onto metaphors involving the wind because the wind seems to exemplify all that is fragile and ephemeral in life. The wind comes and goes without explanation, much like Fortune itself, which is as inexplicable and as arbitrary as a light summer breeze that might cool your sweaty brow and give comfort to your tired bones. Just as the wind can bring destruction and tragedy, it might also bring a cooling breeze that lightens the heart and give hope to the soul. What we cannot predict, ever, is when and where the wind might blow, whether it is an ill-wind or a gentle breeze, whether we will have to zip up or open a window.

On frosters

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There is a new fad in the world, and it has nothing to do with decorating cupcakes and everything to do with going out in the snow and acting as if it were not the least bit cold. I've done it. It's nothing new--I was in college, living in a dorm and prone to all sorts of anti-social and strange behavior. After a particularly horrible cold snap where the temperature did not go above zero for almost five days, a few of us donned shorts and t-shirts to go play Frisbee in the snow when the temperature rocketed all the way up into the mid-twenties. We were a little stir crazy to be outside and breath a little fresh air that wouldn't kill us. We brought out lawn chairs and the grill and made hamburgers--the still air temperature went all the way up to thirty-five that day. We were sweating. That was in January of 1981 in southern Minnesota, now, flash forward thirty years and there are all sorts of photos floating around on the internet machine of people so similar things, but now they have a name: frosters. The idea is to take off most of your clothes and go out in the ice and snow so you can take a picture for the Facebook which your relatives vacationing in Hawaii will see. I can see why this is fun, and I totally understand the insanity. You wouldn't really get the same effect if you put on a parka and boots and stood out in the heat--it's not the same. No one cares about how much heat you can tolerate, although I do admire people who can do it. Frosters are just trying to ignore winter the best they can. It's a mental thing: pretend that the ice and snow don't matter at all, so that sitting in your lawn chair on the beach at Lake Nakomis in January with a beverage in your hand is your way of expressing your denial. Denial is very important when you are freezing off your cojones trying to get a stubborn car started on cold winter morning. Frosting as an activity is probably an outward sign of mental health even when the short, cold days of winter are getting you down. So putting on your swim suit, sunglasses, flip flops, and sunscreen and going outside in January is a great way of thumbing your nose at Old Man Winter. I don't dislike Old Man Winter, but sometimes he is a challenge to the spirit. By pretending that he doesn't matter or that he can't ever really win, one can ignore winter and get on with life. Most frosters, I am assuming, also do a lot of winter sports such as biking, running, grilling, rock-climbing, and pond hockey. I get snowmobilers, skiers, ice fishermen, skaters and the like are really taking their winters seriously, enjoy the cold, and dream of endlessly falling flakes of snow that will close the schools tomorrow. Frosters would take advantage of a snow day to grill steaks, drink a cold frosty one, work on their tans, and shoot the photo for next year's Christmas card with the entire family in swimwear and hip deep in a snow drift. A true froster will never admit they are cold. Probably the worst thing a person could do during a long, hard winter is to wallow in their misery, stay inside, and complain to the rest of the world about cold it is outside. Of course it's cold outside! It's January in the Midwest, but walk faster, admire the next guy's stocking hat even if that's all he's got on! Without a sense of humor, the entire human race is in serious danger of taking itself too seriously, of believing its own press clippings, of sitting down to weep. The true froster laughs in the face of winter because that is all the human froster can do--any other analysis of the situation is to grim to even contemplate. Or decorate cupcakes.

On twenty-nine degrees below zero

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In northern Minnesota (yes, a redundancy) the temperature dropped to minus 29 degrees Fahrenheit this morning. This is not bragging, it's just weather. There have been far colder places in the USA, including the far reaches of Alaska where it is often lots colder. Yet, there is a certain something in the cold weather experience which tests a person's metal. Do you have what it takes to keep on trying on a morning when your car probably won't start, your water pipes may be in danger of freezing, the dog has to be kept inside, ice crystals float like little diamonds in the air, the snow crunches under your feet, and you are bundled up like the Michelin Man. Exposed skin will freeze in less than five minutes at that temperature, so you better know how your cold weather gear works and pay attention. Even the slightest problem, flat tire, no gas, flat battery, turns into a dangerous crisis at that temperature. God forbid your furnace or electricity go out at this temperature. Twenty-nine degrees below zero is nothing to fool with and it's a temperature that puts a huge stress on everything--buildings, heating, plumbing, electricity, travel, cars, trucks, people, children. If you have to be outside for any time at all, you must know what you are up against, or it could be fatal. Waiting outside for anything for any amount of time can chill you to the bone and puts a huge stress on fingers, toes, ears, noses, and feet. Usually people can keep their core warm with a good jacket or parka, but we always skimp on the footwear and the gloves. And let's not even talk about taking your gloves off for moment to do something barehanded at this temperature, which is extremely problematic. If the wind is blowing at all, you have a big problem if you are forced to walk any distance at all. At twenty-nine degrees below zero your breath freezes almost instantly, and the cold air will make your teeth hurt as your breathe. I've had a car battery die at minus twenty-four, which is almost just as bad. My super-cold weather gear consisted of long-johns, wool socks, various layers of cotton and wool t-shirts, thermal wear, down-filled gloves, packs (insulated boots), and a down-filled hat with ear-flaps. None of this clothing will win any fashion awards, but it will keep you from freezing to death when regular clothing just cannot do the job. Because that's what we're talking about--dying. When it's a hundred degrees in the shade, you pour yourself another glass of water, stay out of the sun, relax, take it easy, but at twenty-nine degrees below zero you have to face a few challenges if you have to go outside, go to work, to school. And just because it's cold does not mean that emergency services don't have to be functioning--police, fire, city, ambulances, garbage, snow removal. Curiously, we know that crime tends to dip a bit when the temperature gets this low, so criminals don't like to go out either when it's twenty-nine degrees below zero. If you don't like icy conditions, stay in Texas or Arizona or Florida or California because this is an either you like it or you hate it. And there's no sense in torturing yourself with cold weather if you can help it. Cold weather does not make you more honest, or a better person, or more moral, or more ethical, but what it will do for you is clear: you are certainly a more careful person when it comes to your daily routine because anyone who has ever suffered frostbite, certainly does not want to do it again. Bundle up out there--cold nose, warm heart.

On winter

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Real winter has finally come to southern Minnesota. It has been almost three years since the snow, ice, and cold have settled over the southern plains of the state. For many people, especially people who live in warm climates, it is a complete mystery as to why people would want to live in Minnesota at all given the horrible climate and the challenges that accompany ice and snow. Curiously, Minnesotans may complain, especially in March when it seems like the bad weather will never let go and the parka has become a permanent part of your body, but they complain so that they can hear their voices and know they are still alive in spite of the ice cold temperatures outside. Tonight it will go below zero on the frosty, white plains of the North Star state, and people will continue to go about their business. During a short visit to the grocery store this afternoon people did not even have their coats zipped up, no hats or gloves, acting as if the cold were not there at all. During lunch today at a little restaurant in rural Minnesota, a bunch of snowmobilers came in from a morning run across the fresh powder that fell last night, all bundled up in the sub-zero gear, helmets, scarves, massive gloves. These people know how to enjoy the cold. In other words, the cold and ice and snow are not an impediment to living, life goes on regardless of how hard the snow falls, but you might want to put a real snow shovel in your trunk just in case. "Just in case" is a great set of words to live by in place where mother nature can kill you if you don't pay attention. When I lived in the Twin Cities I always carried an extra parka and heavy boots in my car during the winter. I also carried a couple of big buckets of sand, a hefty snow shovel, and a can with candy bars, Nut Goodies, and trail mix in case I was stranded. The cell phone has really been a life saver for many people and is always with me in the car. I also always filled up my gas tank when it reached half full (empty), and I also carried a couple of bottles of high octane gas additive to keep water vapor out of the gas line. When it's twenty-five degrees below zero, one thinks of these things. So the snow falls, the ice gets hard, and temperatures dip into a region that most people don't care to discuss. Instead, Minnesotans get out their skis and snowboards, their snow shoes and sleds, and head outside for some frigid fun. The trick to surviving winter is to never acknowledge that winter is a problem. Winter can smell your fear, but it runs from laughter. You must learn to laugh in the face of Old Man Winter. Oh, you might be uncomfortable from time to time, and ten inches of snow will make driving tricky, but given time, warm gloves, a scarf, boots, and good parka, you can get through almost anything winter can throw at you. From time to time, you will have to batten down the hatches and stay inside. A bad winter storm is a thing to be respected, and sometimes a little bit of humility in the face of a cold north wind is the better part of valor. It's good to know your limitations, and winter will be more than happy to point those out at least once a winter. The snow covers the ground like a white death shroud, a pall which reminds all the denizens of winter that mortality is real, that no one is free of suffering, and that time marches on, inexorably, blindly. So the mice hibernate, the snow plows roll, I make a snowball with my bare hands, my shoes are drying at the door, my hat and gloves idly lounge on a shelf in the closet, my scarf waits in anticipation for its next outing. The temperatures are dropping and sun is getting weak and yellow as it drops on the winter horizon. Winter is here.

On blizzards

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I am sitting on the edge of a blizzard. The anticipation is killing me. The dark of the night has overtaken the countryside, but the first flakes have yet to fall. Visibility has already dropped to zero in several areas south and west of here, but for the moment, mother nature remains eerily silent. Waiting for the other shoe to drop is easily worse than actually watching the snow fall. Blizzards are a strange brand of storm, a sort of frozen hurricane with a wicked breeze and slippery precipitation. But they are rare, and I've only experienced a few of these natural wonders of winter weather. By itself, snow does not a blizzard make. A lot of snow is just a nuisance, makes driving really tough, and snowballs are an option, but just snow does not a blizzard make. A real blizzard whips up when the wind starts to blow--15 to 20 miles an hour and above. When the snow starts to move horizontally, you might think of taking cover, somewhere warm where the wind cannot reach you. The wind in winter is not your friend. In a full-blown blizzard, the wind drifts the snow, reduces visibility, hides the roads, covers the sidewalks, and nips at your nose and ears. My most bitter winter memories have to do with fighting the wind as I walked to school, tried to run, made my way home. And yet, if you don't have to go out, if you get a school day, a day off, a day when you have no responsibilities outside of your home, then you can sit by a fire and watch it snow, let the wind blown, the temperature drop, and the snow fall. From the security of your own well-heated home, a blizzard is a thing of beauty to experience as it whips and whirls the snow outside your windows. The ballet between wind, snow, and cold is a masterwork of chaos, anarchy, and power. We puny humans think we can control things, we think that we are so powerful, we think that we are the center of the universe, but a blizzard will make you think otherwise. Witnessing the power of a winter storm is a grim reminder of how fragile we really are, that we can only survive under "Goldylocks" conditions where the temperatures are just right, where the wind doesn't blow too much, where barometric pressures won't kill us. The atmospheric conditions generated by a blizzard are extreme and dangerous. The marvelous deadly beauty of a blizzard is a hint that we are small, fragile players on the face of this strange planet. We over-estimate our own importance, our ability to control our environment, our reliance on heating and electricity to keep us from freezing to death. There is this delicate balance between the tragic dangerous symmetry of dancing ice and snow and our humble delicate bodies that crave a warm protected nest that will shield us from the freezing daggers of a blizzard. To experience such a storm borders on the sublime--the violence, the danger, the unpredicatability, but to witness such a thing is also to respect it and keep one's distance. Nevertheless, there will be those people, tonight and tomorrow, who will need rescuing from the snow when their vehicles go into the ditch, spinning and sliding off the road as they challenge the laws of physics. No matter how much you spend on four-wheel drive and stitched leather seats, your luxury SUV is no match for a healthy blizzard. Something to think about.

On autumn

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There is no autumn in central Texas. I have reached this conclusion after nineteen summers of disappointments. Day-after-day I hope that the air will cool, that the days will grow short, that the leaves will change, and that I might need to put on a sweat shirt to stay warm. These are all illusions that never come to pass. The temps go down a bit, but not really. All you can say is that instead of really hot, it's just less hot than the day before. Cool, nippy air stays in Vermont and Wisconsin, afraid to venture south. The leaves don't change on a live oak, but they do stay a creepy olive drab for the entire year before the tree starts shedding a bit in spring--creepy and unnatural. The rest of the leaves just turn a tired brown and fall off. Nothing either aesthetic or romantic about brown leaves. The days grow a little shorter, but before you know it, they start to lengthen again. Autumn never comes to central Texas. Even when it rains, the rain is still warm and has no relation to the arctic fronts that blow across the Dakotas or Minnesota. The endless heat of summer wears on the soul like a song you've heard too many times. It's warm when you get up, it's warm when you go to bed. This is the endless cycle of the boring hot weather where I live. The endless string of hot days leaves me with a profound sense of malaise and melancholy. Autumn was always a break from the heat of summer. The leaves would start changing to beautiful yellows, oranges, and reds. The lush green coats of summer are put away, and the festive, bright colors of fall are pulled out of the closets in celebration of the coming winter. A blast of color to announce that summer is over and that the icy winds of winter will soon be blowing through the streets. The changing seasons give life a sense of continuity. The rhythms of nature vibrate in these changes which reassure everyone and everything that the cycles of life of birth-life-maturity-death are always true and functioning. Living in Texas I often get the feeling that nothing changes, that there are no cycles of life, and that life is just one long decadent boring summer of ‘52 afternoon. There is no frost on the grass. The squirrels do not sleep away the dark hours of the cold winter. The ponds and lakes do not gracefully freeze over to wait for spring. One never catches a whiff of burning leaves. The bugs and mosquitoes just never go away. It's as if autumn just never gets a chance here. Autumn is a festival of life that gives nature a chance to recognize that winter is close, but since winter does not exist here either, autumn is superfluous. So I give in to my nostalgia--candy caramel apples, strange snowy days, icy morning puddles, frost everywhere, dying tomato plants, bare trees. Autumn is a time of change, and change is good. It invigorates the soul and enlivens the spirit, clears out the cobwebs and cools all that summer sweat. Just how many days in a row of sunny and 95F can a person stand, anyway?

On autumn

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There is no autumn in central Texas. I have reached this conclusion after nineteen summers of disappointments. Day-after-day I hope that the air will cool, that the days will grow short, that the leaves will change, and that I might need to put on a sweat shirt to stay warm. These are all illusions that never come to pass. The temps go down a bit, but not really. All you can say is that instead of really hot, it's just less hot than the day before. Cool, nippy air stays in Vermont and Wisconsin, afraid to venture south. The leaves don't change on a live oak, but they do stay a creepy olive drab for the entire year before the tree starts shedding a bit in spring--creepy and unnatural. The rest of the leaves just turn a tired brown and fall off. Nothing either aesthetic or romantic about brown leaves. The days grow a little shorter, but before you know it, they start to lengthen again. Autumn never comes to central Texas. Even when it rains, the rain is still warm and has no relation to the arctic fronts that blow across the Dakotas or Minnesota. The endless heat of summer wears on the soul like a song you've heard too many times. It's warm when you get up, it's warm when you go to bed. This is the endless cycle of the boring hot weather where I live. The endless string of hot days leaves me with a profound sense of malaise and melancholy. Autumn was always a break from the heat of summer. The leaves would start changing to beautiful yellows, oranges, and reds. The lush green coats of summer are put away, and the festive, bright colors of fall are pulled out of the closets in celebration of the coming winter. A blast of color to announce that summer is over and that the icy winds of winter will soon be blowing through the streets. The changing seasons give life a sense of continuity. The rhythms of nature vibrate in these changes which reassure everyone and everything that the cycles of life of birth-life-maturity-death are always true and functioning. Living in Texas I often get the feeling that nothing changes, that there are no cycles of life, and that life is just one long decadent boring summer of ‘52 afternoon. There is no frost on the grass. The squirrels do not sleep away the dark hours of the cold winter. The ponds and lakes do not gracefully freeze over to wait for spring. One never catches a whiff of burning leaves. The bugs and mosquitoes just never go away. It's as if autumn just never gets a chance here. Autumn is a festival of life that gives nature a chance to recognize that winter is close, but since winter does not exist here either, autumn is superfluous. So I give in to my nostalgia--candy caramel apples, strange snowy days, icy morning puddles, frost everywhere, dying tomato plants, bare trees. Autumn is a time of change, and change is good. It invigorates the soul and enlivens the spirit, clears out the cobwebs and cools all that summer sweat. Just how many days in a row of sunny and 95F can a person stand, anyway?