For some reason, I don't mind at all. It's not just because I love autumn, love the changing colors and the way the world works so smoothly, cycling around right on schedule. It's not just because I prefer cooler temperatures, love the snap in the air and the crackle underfoot, the way the horses grow shaggier with each passing day. It's not just the urge to hibernate, getting out the winter duvet, that cozy thick warm cover that turns the bed into a nest. It's not just the way the grass silvers with tiny diamonds every morning as we depart and the kids delight in the silly faces I scrape on their car windows before removing the crackled coating so I can see to drive. And neither is it just the hope of snow, that wonderful white transformation that's like a new view on the everyday scenes we take for granted.
I know that I'll complain about the lack of sunlight, and shiver uncontrollably when I have to leave the comfort of my home. It's part and parcel of the cycle. There can't be one without the other and I wouldn't enjoy the sunshine I get half so much if it was sunny without fail every day. Its very absence is what causes me to treasure so much its presence. It's nice stuff when you can get it, those summer days.
It's a time of rest for this side of the world, a time for the earth to relax and renew. Even though it's the busiest time of the year for ME, for us; it's the promise that the earth gives each year, that winter is a temporary thing, a short and silent sleep, at the end of which the light returns, the warmth returns, and everything begins again.