The first slight signs we’re easing into autumn

Opinion

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This article was published 24/08/2024 (414 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Always a surprise — a pleasant one, too.

Sometimes, it’s early. Sometimes, late.

This year, it was Wednesday. Early for sure.

It was something about the wind, just after dawn, while the sun was barely up above downtown, a thumbnail edge of orange cresting the rooftops.

I’d already walked one block north and one east when it hit me, both the light touch of the morning wind and the slightly damp chill of it on my arms.

We have, I realized, turned the corner toward autumn.

Sure, it’s only late August, and August temperatures are still around, into the high 20s Celsius during the day. But the first note of autumn’s song has been sung.

In the quiet of the 6:30 a.m. streets, you still step in and out of the pools of sound of random air conditioners, the days still hot enough that some sleepers are unwilling to wait for cooler night air to finger in through open windows.

But the overnight temperatures are dropping off, slowly and steadily, the same way the days are measurably shorter now.

The light-up sign outside Lord Nelson School, off McPhillips, a sign that’s said “See you in September” in red letters since June, now seems more like a threat than a cheery hand-wave of farewell.

The change is inevitable, but inviting.

The switch into autumn has always been a favourite of mine: it comes tight on the heels of berry-picking weather, when, in a good year with plenty of rain and heat, blueberries are fat and heavy and bunched together like small dusty grapes, soft and sweet enough that, when you tug them free from the bushes, an overripe few stain your fingers purple.

I’m waiting for a few really cold nights to get the small low-bush cranberries ready to collect for the freezer, their taste a sweet/tart blend that is never cloying, even when they’re at their ripest.

It’s when you think about putting wood in, even if you’re provinces away from your wood stove.

When you make plans to finish the outside painting, because there are only so many weekends left.

When you can watch the fruit on the apple trees on your walk home bulk up and start to blush towards ripeness.

It seems almost counterintuitive to be thinking about new beginnings at a time when you can see the plants winding down for the year: tomatoes are coming into their own, but the leaves on the tomato plants are showing the wear-and-tear of marshalling their fruit to ripeness.

The squash vines are shedding their biggest and best leaves already, putting all their energy into finishing up their squat, round fruit.

The trees are showing occasional sprays of yellow leaves amongst the green, and there are even dry brown leaves in the street gutters already, though only a beginning few.

But a start seems like just the right thing to be thinking about as you see you are reaching an end: I love Canadian summer tremendously, be it in Saskatchewan or Winnipeg or Newfoundland, but I truly believe I love the walk into autumn even more.

I only wish I wasn’t so much in the centre of the city: I yearn for cold and early morning wood work, hauling four-foot spruce lengths out of the bush to cut them into logs and split them, to smell the sap on my gloves, to stack the junks of wood in a woodshed.

Those first few mornings when the night has been cold enough to start a fire, that alchemy of balled-up paper, kindling and logs organized in that loose stack that lets the air in and helps them catch. The sulphur smell and flare of that first struck match.

I’m missing the chance to make my way through the brush to find those particular mossy dells where the chanterelle mushrooms throw up their orange boxer’s ears, ready to be picked and cooked. And eaten.

Missing the smell of the chainsaw smoke, the sound of its uneven grumble while it sits idling for the next log, and the way the smell of every different wood rises so richly from its sawdust.

Collecting spruce slash for bonfires, turning up the potatoes that have fattened all summer long until the plants finally die back, picking the garlic that always smells angry when it comes out of the soil. Picking surprisingly different apples from a bevy of wild trees.

Finding that hint of wood-stove smell in the cold air outside, catching up to you on the wind.

Hot coffee outdoors on a cold morning, steam rising from the cup in that translucent coil, the world around you settling into hiatus.

I’ll miss you, summer. I’m sure I’ll be missing you even more in the winter.

But there is so much to love in the fall.