FEELS LIKE FALL

Today the world turned.

I used to wonder what made that day when summer turned to fall. My guess was it had to do with the shortened days, but why one day summer, the next, fall?

Here in Austin, the temperatures have been and remain at 100 or even 100 plus. Everything non-irrigated is drought-brown. Leaves don't fall till much later in the year and some fall - I know, this is hard to understand unless you live here - in the spring.

But today feels like fall.

Is it the color of the sun, at an ever changing annual angle? (But there's less change farther south. Texas is south.)

I used to think maybe it was the delicious smell of fallen leaves. But they haven't fallen.

I thought it had to do with school cycles that framed the seasons when I was so impressionable. But school where I grew up didn't start till after labor day. And high school and college started a week or more after labor day.

Maybe 11 or 12 years of the annual Great Minnesota Get Together - the state fair - cycled my internal calendar. It's almost that time.

I haven't seen any apple cider, haven't smelt burnt leaves, haven't gone back to school, there have been no cool nights, days are only imperceptibly shorter, I still wear shorts and t-shirts and go barefoot around the house.

And yet, today feels like fall.