The Experience of Fall

If this time of year had a smell it would be pumpkin spice and wet leaves. The kind of fragrance that makes you want to start a fire and cozy up with your children under soft flannel.

The taste would be apples. Crisp and crunchy as the act of that first bite is nature’s version of poetry.

If this season were a sensation it would be the weight a king-sized candy bar contributes to an open pillowcase. If childhood nostalgia were a place, it would live here in the soft hum of family on a sugar high.

The sight of foliage’s cascading colors as trees ignite greens into red, brown, and gold.

If fall were a sound it’d be our children’s spooked giggles. When we encourage them to travel safely along the boundaries of fear with the celebration of weirdness, imagination, and creativity.

There is something about this season that sparks comfort—gratitude that invites you to lean closer in towards one another. Perhaps it’s the beginning of the holidays, but I think it has everything to do with what’s happening inside our minds. We witness fall as a temporal landmark where we prioritize all the things that immersing ourselves in nature does for our spirit.

When in reality fall, just like our own happiness is not a place, a thing we can reach out and touch, it’s a state of mind that we can allow ourselves to visit, during any season of life.