Thursday, October 29, 2009

Fall

The seasons changed while I was comatose. The Puget Sound region reached the end of a glorious summer, tripped over the skateboard concealed in the detritus of big leaf maple leaves and pitched headlong down the stairs into autumn, at the base of which it now lies, twitching occasionally and hoping that some passerby will hear its mewling cries for help.

Most of the northern US classifies fall as being emotionally signaled by the first frost. For us, it is the first fall storms, which wind up through the valleys, bringing hail and thunder and leaving in their wake a chill in the air. We don't get the swath of color, but rather bursts of turning leaves against an evergreen background. The clouds clear and Rainier is wrapped in a mantle of new snow.

And being Seattle, we tend to overreact just a tad. The initial rained turned all eyes to the levees in the Green, while it was the Snohomish that had worse flooding. And every flooded porch and patio is the harbinger of the upcoming floodpocalypse. Always skittery about snow, the populace is now particularly freaked about rain.

Freaked about the rain. In Seattle.

Yeah, its going to be an interesting autumn.

More later,