The Southern Fall

Each autumn I get tricked into thinking that maybe, just maybe, the earth where I live will not change ever again---that it will remain October forever. The cool mornings and evenings, the bearable daytime warmth in Alabama’s Indian Summer, football season, the start of a new school year, the glory of the Southern Fall with festivals, mule days and festive eating, why shouldn’t it be this way from now on? But it doesn’t last. The seasons continue revolving and before you know it the Fall of 2010 will be just another memory just like all the rest that came before. If I could be left anywhere within the 365 days that the earth takes to circle that yellow body in the sky, it would now, in October, in the Southern South.