This morning, after another rocky night trying to get some sleep, I got up at 8 with the dogs. I put them in their harnesses and opened the front door. As we walked out onto the front porch a shock of cold air woke me up. It was actually cold. It wasn’t yet 50 degrees. This last week it was in the 80’s here. I woke up. I came alive.

Fall is my favorite time of the year. It always has been since I was very young. And I grew up in the midwest, and then lived in the mountains of Virginia, and my favorite thing in the whole world was living in the four seasons, and the colors changing, and the crisp cool weather. I love so much about fall. We did not want to move to Wilmington, NC 26 years ago. We had to because of my husband’s job. He lost his job when his company was sold. He had built our dream home on 20 acres in the mountains. We had left the midwest with our young children to have that life, but we were a one income family of 5 and after a year with no job we had no choice but for him to take the job in Wilmington. We had to sell Springhill, our beloved mountain home, a passive solar timber frame home built into a hillside overlooking mountains and meadow where over morning coffee you watched deer outside your windows. We had to move into a neighborhood in Wilmington, the land of hurricanes without 4 beautiful seasons, a place where you could buy your Christmas tree in shorts. It was wrong, just wrong, and it was the beginning of the end of our marriage. Having to move here did something to us and we were never the same again.

I remember a time when we were still married, out on a date, walking along the Cape Fear River in the historic district downtown and we looked at one another and said the same thing. We didn’t want to die here. We didn’t want to live out our lives here. We ached for the mountains. We didn’t like this hot, flat landscape. But over 2 decades later, though no longer married for some long time now, we are both still here. In the land where there are no real falls, where hurricanes come, where you can get your Christmas trees in shorts, where, I thought about this just today, you rarely need a winter coat. I bought a new winter coat 4 years ago. I think I’ve worn it twice. Now I’ve lost almost 60 pounds and counting and it is way too big on me. I will do with a heavy cardigan and shawl. I have over 100 more pounds to lose. A winter coat would be a ridiculous thing to buy here.

But today I went out with the dogs and it was cold. Cold for us here. And something in me came alive. And it has been a beautiful day. And I am deeply grateful, more than I know how to say.

There have been many shifts in my life lately. The hurricane caused major shifts. I will be dealing with the aftermath of the hurricane for a long time. But it has caused other shifts, with my writing and teaching. And I have had to make decisions that have not been popular with some people, and I have had to stand firm. I have had to watch people go. And I’m alright with that. It was coming, it had to happen, and now it has. But it is good, it has paved the way for changes that needed to come. A new day is dawning.

It is now after 4:30. I stopped here to talk to my daughter on the phone, to take the dogs out for a nice long walk. Now I am going to take a nap before I have to teach tonight. In the fullness of autumn so many things change, leaves fall, there are losses, and the losses make way for gains to come. Also it is the season of the harvest. I believe there is much to come, and I am deeply grateful.

I hope you are enjoying fall wherever you are. I hope you have brisk cool mornings that wake you up and make you come alive. I am looking forward to many more…