The Season

It occurred to me recently that I'm somewhat of a season whore, by which I mean that my favorite season is whatever season it currently is. I love summer for Orcas Island and slow motion sunsets; spring (although I don't know if spring is ever my favorite) for the Pike Place Cheese Festival and the end of classes; winter for the crisp air and twinkle lights and snowy nights when the sky never really gets dark. I love them all, but right now fall, for its scarves and peppermint hot chocolate, its bare timber and the way it has of illuminating the beauty in decay, is pure, unadulterated perfection. 

I wrote a story once--well, it was really more of a short, untidy vignette--that I've entirely forgotten except for the very last scene. A mildly autistic man named Gus Honey (his name is just Gus, but everyone addresses him as "Gus, honey") is sitting in a cafe with his face pressed to the glass, watching leaves fall from a maple tree near the parking lot. At the booth next to his, a couple is fighting. Gus covers his ears and wonders what the world would be like if people were like leaves and became breathtakingly stunning right before they died.
I don't have all the kinks worked out in that story, and I may never, but it's beautiful to imagine that when our time comes to let go we do so gracefully, brilliantly, as the best possible versions of ourselves.

This picture on the left is of a Japanese maple tree in our yard--what my family calls the Lee Tree. When I was ten, my best friend's dad died of cancer. He was the best kind of man. Always smiling, always playing his guitar, calling me "Libby" and asking to see all my "boo-boos" which he would kiss, and of course the pain was always instantly gone. He was my second father, and I will ache for him every day for the rest of my life. After he died, my family planted a tree in his honor out our kitchen window. It has grown to around seven feet and is the first thing you see when you look up while washing dishes. Every autumn the leaves turn a radiant red and we collect a handful and mail them to my best friend's family. Watching the Lee Tree change with the season is undeniably my favorite part of fall. I like to think that it's Lee himself bringing the beauty, kissing each one of the leaves and making them blush.

Last weekend I went for a hike with my friend Ellen in St. Edwards State Park. The weather was blissful (see photo on the right) and the ground covering of leaves conveniently masked the muddiness of the trail from the past week's rain. The path wound down through the woods to shore of Lake Washington. There's something about fall in the Pacific Northwest--maybe it's simply the fact that we have it at all--that makes me endlessly grateful that I live here of all places in the world. I adore Australia (and may in fact move back there someday) but Seattle is constantly perfect in the way that very few things are.