The Golden Autumn of 2021

Everyone remembers the Halloween blizzard of 1991, and we can all think back to where we were when that tornado ripped through town in—you remember, the year your cat died—but a year or two from now, will anyone remember the golden autumn of 2021? Probably not.

After the long summer drought, the accepted wisdom was that the autumn leaves would be sub-par at best. The negativity was so widespread that some even cited the lack of vaccine compliance as a factor contributing to a likely drab fall season. (Not really. I just made that up.)

Yet here we are, in the third or fourth week of bright blue skies and stunning leaves of every hue.

As the mornings grow darker, Hilary and I often step out into the front yard to check on Orion, Taurus, the Pleiades, and the Gemini Twins. As we take our morning walk around the block, I am stupified and delighted, again and again, to find that Sirius, the dog star, which was shining brightly above our spruce tree a few minutes ago, is now occupying a position above Jay-Jay's house at the end of the next block! It hardly seems possible.

One dark morning recently I put a plan into action that I'd been contemplating for weeks: after turning off the porch light, I took my binoculars outside and lay down on the front sidewalk. Scanning the sky in the vicinity of Cancer, below Castor and Pollux and to the east of Procyon,  I finally spotted the Beehive Cluster, which I hadn't seen in years. Yes, it's faint, but it's still there, and sort of where I thought it would be.

See the owl?

On another morning we were greeted, when we stepped outside into the dark, by the complex, multi-note hoot of a great-horned owl. The typical call has five hoots, but this owl had added a few grace notes to her call. Then we heard the male respond, shorter, less delicate, on a lower pitch. It appeared that Chad, our neighbor across the street, was shining a searchlight up into the trees.

But the greater glories of the seasons arrive during daylight hours: the multicolored leaves, the rich blue sky, the intermittent clouds, and the ambiance generated by sunlight irradiating the cool crisp air from a lower angle. Just driving down the parkway can make the heart sing. Two young oaks no more than twenty feet tall have been putting on a show down by the archery range for weeks, moving from a coppery yellow-orange to something resembling rusty candy-apple red.

crispy leaves

Meanwhile, the dry weather has made it a perfect year for raking. The fallen leaves are crisp and light. You can do a few loads, carry them on a tarp back to the compost pile, call it a day, and return the next morning to do a few more. Quite a few leaves linger on the tress, so there's no special pressure about getting them all raked up the first time around.

On Sunday morning I got up at five, turned on the computer, only to find that the time had changed: it was actually (or conventionally?) four in the morning. The male owl was hooting across the street, but getting no reply.

Later I climbed up onto the roof while Hilary held our shaky aluminum ladder to spend some time removing the leaves from the gutters. The view is nice from up there, but the positioning required, above yet leaning out over the gutters, is awkward, and I ended up with a crick in my back. That didn't stop me from pruning the branches of the mulberry and the pagoda dogwood that had grown in over the roof during the summer.

Hilary had agreed to stay outside until I was done, so she could hold the ladder while I stepped gingerly around the edge and started down, (most mountaineering accidents take place on the descent) but she was out by the curb chatting with our neighbor Sarah. These conversations are interesting and important; Sarah and her husband are much better connected with neighborhood happenings than we are, and we enjoy hearing about their camping excursions, too. So I sat on the crest of the garage for a while, idly admiring the rooftop views, too far away to hear or appreciate the conversation. Eventually I could not resist banging the top of the ladder against the gutter once or twice--oh so discreetly.

On mornings like these, everything happens in a precious envelope. Unlike the seemingly endless days of summer, and of winter, we know that this autumn interlude is not going the last long. Just yesterday we drove down to the warehouse district to have what may be our last al fresco lunch of the year, following the route I took for twenty years five days a week to and from work. A new food court called Graze has opened in a space that formerly served as the parking lot for the Bookmen. This neighborhood has changed in many ways, but the view toward downtown from the rooftop terrace of Graze still contains a few venerable warehouse landmarks, and the food was good.

Last night we went down to Magers and Quinn, in Uptown, where I was scheduled to read from my new book, Cabin in the City. I always enjoy standing in front of dear friends, former clients and workmates who have become friends, and total strangers, shuffling papers while trying to keep things lively. During my ad lib introductory spiel, I said a few words about how glorious the autumn had been, and someone in the back row shouted, "Why don't you write about that?"

And I said, "Maybe I will."