Fall Equinox

One can almost feel the turning of the seasons.  The scent of the air, the alteration of sound, the way the light touches the mountains, a touch of freshness in the summer wind...all these things give hints of the change.  The fall equinox is upon us, when the days are of equal length, when the sun, traversing through the seasons, crosses the equator and heralds the beginning of fall in the northern hemisphere. This year the equinox occurs on September 22, 1.44 pm PDT.  

It is one of my favorite times of year.  The nights start to cool off a bit, and the buzzing of the cicadas starts to die down.   Everything starts to senesce and slow down, migrants start passing through, and it is a time of reflection. So the equinox is a time of equality:  day and night the same.  It is about the slow winding down of growth to the sleep of winter. It is time to reflect on the year: what it brought, what was accomplished, what is still incomplete. 

Goldenbush blooming in the desert fall.
c 2008 Ginny Short

It is funny, reflecting on the change of fall.  One of the things that comes to mind is "fall colors".  I have seen the dramatic and lovely change both in pictures and in person, and there is no doubt it is fantastic. I have been told it is even more lovely in places I have never been. Ever since I can remember I have reflected on the changing seasons, and being a desert rat, have never lived in a place where the trees change on such a grand scale.  I have had friends and strangers remark to me that there are no seasons in the southwest, and note that as one reason they could not live here forever, as reason for their homesickness when the taste of frost should be on the air.  I had a plaque on my wall in my office as a graduate student:  We have four seasons here: fire, flood, wind, earthquake.  Other plaques say "fire, flood, wind and drought!".  

But we do have seasons.  Sometimes they come on soft and subtly, like now as the barest hint of change in the wind. Sometimes they come on hard and abrupt, like a cool, breezy spring jumping to the triple digits overnight. Each season has its own finery, from the goldenbush of autumn to the ghost flowers of spring, the quiet green of winter to the desert willows of summer.  Yes, seasons change even here.  One can almost feel the turning of the season from blistering summer to sultry fall.