fuck global warming

Dear k-

A large portion of my life has been consumed with a bitter pursuit to experience the autumn of my memory. In actuality, it’s not one single autumn, but the amalgam of several years’ worth of autumns, spanning decades, loosely woven into one ideal memory that I keep reaching for but falling short. It’s comprised of those perfect days, the ones where, if you’re lucky, you pause and think to yourself, “this is exactly what I want in life right now and I am content”. The crisp breath of winter’s chill beginning to sneak into the late summer air, still heavy and radiant with accrued heat of the sultry months prior, the wind just barely nipping through my sweater, staring up at a blue morning sky unblemished by a single fluff of cloud. In the air there is the scent of a fire, carried by the intermittent breeze, from some neighbor burning leaves in his yard. It’s technically illegal within the city limits but I don’t complain because I like it; it makes me feel at ease and so I breathe deep and hope I never forget how that scent makes me feel.

Halloween is approaching. I have a marching band competition in a few weeks. I have college homecoming this month. I have to start winterizing my garden soon. I volunteered to monitor the corn maze with the other kids from church tomorrow night and my mom said she’d drive me and my friend. The pavement feels different under my shoes these days. It’s no longer the sizzling bright expanse that felt so brutally hard and intolerant the past few months. Now it feels somehow softer, older, more tame, gritty with sand and sparkled with broken glass, more forgiving in the wake of the first frost of the year. The gutters rustle with papery leaves of reds, yellows, but mostly browns. With every gust they shiver and break out into a thrilled form of applause, cackling as they tumble across the asphalt. I’m fourteen years old walking home from practice. I’m twenty, ambling across the University quad towards the library. I’m twenty five, standing outside a cafe with a steaming black coffee warming my bare hand, thinking about the exam I have to take in a few days.

Last autumn was nothing but a disappointment. We sweated through the months that are normally reserved for that first shiver, and then within a week the temperatures plummeted so violently that the flora did not know how to respond. Trees went from being green to suddenly bare. Grasses shriveled so quickly it seemed like the world changed nearly overnight. Snow was on the ground to muffle the crackling shuffle of leaves before the first gust could even catch them. It left me feeling empty, cheated. There would be no ideal autumn memories to log for this season. And it seems, upon retrospect, that the last few years have followed the same pattern. The quintessential transitional season is becoming rarer as I get older. Is it because my memory is flawed? Am I casting everything in the rosy glow of youth? Or are is my favorite season truly becoming scarcer? Do I have less to celebrate now? Am I not taking the same time to pause and admire?

Here’s to hoping this autumn will give us something better.

-k