Autumn is a special season for me. Not that anything special or very emotional has ever happened in autumn, in fact it's probably the season where the least has happened throughout my life.
But for some reason, autumn just fits me. And to be clear, when I say autumn, I'm not really talking about the whole of autumn but more like mid September to mid November. To me, early September is more like the end of summer and after mid November it's more like the start of winter. To put it in another way, I'm talking about autumn proper and not the in-between periods.
As I was saying, autumn just fits me. It's something about the air, like it almost always is, it isn't really cold yet, just enough to wear a hoodie or a light jacket. It feels crisp, and the sound carries clearly through it. There is just enough wind to make it perfectly breathable, and it is humid in the perfect way because it rains a bunch.
The air in autumn carries some of the best smells in the world. The smell of petrichor when it has rained over dry ground, the smell of decomposing leaves and growing mushrooms.
Another thing that is unmatched about autumn is the colors. Of course there are the leaves, all adorned of ambers and reds, with some keeping their green a little longer. But most importantly there is the sun. The sun in autumn is lowering in preparation for winter, it's fiery glow is never as fiery as in these last few days where days are still long enough to feel alive, but short enough to watch the sunset. The way light goes through the filter of the decaying foliage into your eyes is breathtaking, and every walk outside becomes a work of art.
Autumn is the season where I can start to cuddle up in my blankets with a nice cup of cinnamon apple tea. Everything seems to slow down, but simply slow down not sleep like in winter. And I like it when things slow down, I think that autumn matches the pace of my brain.
Autumn also gets a special mention for Halloween, in my opinion, the best celebration of them all. Maybe it's my favourite because I've always dreamed of living in a world where the mystique and the real confound, where creatures are not just misunderstanding of natural phenomena but actual living beings that have access to a world I don't. Halloween is a fleeting moment where magic appears to be real, carried by the light of candles hidden inside pumpkins' mouths.
Rain is also a big part of autumn, but it's the right kind of rain. It's rain that is rarely very cold, and that falls down gently. Rarely is it pouring down for hours, like a wall of water with sharp drops. Instead, the drops are sparser and fuller, it might rain for half an hour six times throughout the day, leaving everything wet all the time, making the trees keep raining after the sky has stopped. This creates a sweet melody, of drops falling here and there at different rhythms on different surfaces. And I don't know why but I feel at ease in this wet air, if I had to choose another living thing I most resemble I'd say moss. It comes in many colors, shapes and adapts to most place it finds its way to as long as there is enough water.
I'm not sure how to put it best into words, but autumn has this feeling that makes me feel like I'm in the right place. Like I belong to this specific moment of earth rotation around the sun. Everything about autumn makes me feel like the earth is cocooning me, like it's gently putting a blanket around my shoulders as if to say I'm welcome here.