This morning I awoke to temps in the 50’s, a brisk wind, and the smell of fall starting to creep into the air. I went for a short walk this morning, and as I left the house I was thankful for my warm hoodie, while simultaneously trying to defy the weather with my shorts and sandals. I don’t even think it got much into the 70s today, with even cooler temps predicted for the week ahead.

Season changes can be both difficult and refreshing. There’s a newness to the changing weather patterns and the different smells in the air. Gone are the bright vibrant blooms of summer flowers, replaced with the rustle of tall grasses, reaching towards the sky, achieving heights unheard of earlier in the year. There’s a beauty in the season between blooms and the vibrant colors of changing leaves. The green things are reaching their apex, the fulfillment of all that they could accomplish in a season. The strain of growing so hard and fast permeates their slightly duller and brown tinged hues.

The air itself struggles with its identity. As we biked along the river last night we passed through alternating pockets of hot and cold air, battling against one another along unseen battle lines. Every 30 feet the temperature would change 10 degrees, providing relief, refreshment, or comfort. Constant turmoil between what was, and what is to be.

In a few weeks the summer air will all be a memory and the comforting embrace of fall, with it’s warm spices, will be all that remain. It’s important to stop for a moment and savor what is before rushing into what will be. To look one more time at the tall grasses, and the remnants of green that breathe one last gasp. The sun is not yet low in the sky, and so we life our faces to it, and its warmth, breathing in the freshness of a summer gone by.

Soon, I’ll put away the sandals. But not quite yet.