Part of the magic of running is the chance to experience the changes in the seasons. The running motion remains the same, but the scenery, the air you breath, and all the wonderful things you soak into your body cycle. The cold air of winter makes your cheeks red and icicles form on your eyebrows. Then the warmth of spring sucks the tulips from the ground and thaws out your muscles. Soon enough, the scorching heat of a mid-day summer run makes the gray matter in your brain boil with joy. And now, perhaps the best running season of all, Autumn, where the air is brisk, and the earth is metamorphosing all around us.
Autumn running is perhaps the best, but are we there yet? Sure, the calender says it starts on September 22nd or something, but.... When does fall officially begin?
The first day you put on a long sleeve shirt to run in?When the first brown leaf falls from its branch, and zig-zags down to the grass?When you wave to the bus full of kids, two of them being your own, and they're off for their first day of school?
When the brisk air of a Saturday makes you hear college football fight songs in the air?The first snap of a NFL game and the hills are alive with the sound of fantasy football geeks everywhere?When you start marking your calendar trying to hit all those 20 mile marathon-training runs sponsored by local shoe stores?When Target clears out a special row for Halloween costumes? When you buy a bag of Halloween candy from Target, but then open it up and eat it a month early?When the grass finally stops growing and the mower hibernates?When you finally wear those running tights or put on those dollar store pair of running gloves?When you don’t have to worry about the humidity and heat of running at one o'clock on Saturday?When the first episode of Modern Family, or American Horror Story, or The Walking Dead finally air? (shows I"m looking forward to)When your lungs breath in air cold enough to make them burn, and can see your breath in the morning, and you remember how, as a child, you'd pretend you were blowing out smoke?When the apples become more delicious, and the apple orchards become fantastic sugarlands of doughnuts and cider?When all around you, the green leaves explode to a brilliant color burst before slowly dying and descending to earth. There they lay, readying themselves for an even deader winter, frozen in cryogenics, waiting for a warm spring to bring them back to life? Okay, that last one was waxing poetic and waxing pretty bad. Here are what minds much greater and poetic than mine have said about this glorious season: Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
George EliotAutumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower.
Albert Camus
I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.
Nathaniel HawthorneNature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold,
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
David LettermanWinter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.
Stanley HorowitzAutumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.
William Cullen Bryant
