Pretty leaves aside, autumns are grim
One of the things I enjoy about living in Canada is the nature of the seasons, four distinct parts of the year that present the opportunity for new experiences. Waking up, going for a walk, even driving the car is very different in summer than in winter, fall or spring, and I like that.
Except right now. Right now, I’m struggling to remember why I live here.
Sure, the socialized medicine and (mostly) free education are great. The people are (generally) nice. But getting up at 7 a.m. in more or less total darkness, then watching the sun go down while
I’m still sitting at my desk at 5 p.m. is agonizing. The end of daylightsaving time puts me back into a funk almost every year.
Fall has always been my least favourite season. Yes, the leaves turning hues of orange, yellow and red is pretty but what comes after — barren trees, frozen ground — is awful. Scraping frost off the car is a reminder that I’ll soon be pushing snow off it as well. The wind picks up, the rain is often cold, and the light takes on a weird flatness that delivers little by the way of brightness or warmth.
Fresh memories of summer make it all the worse.
Long days in the saddle riding my bike to local microbreweries with friends — probably my favourite thing to do in pandemic times when the patios turned COVID into an afterthought — is now out of reach and won’t return for months. I can feel the fitness I’ve built up slowly ebbing from my body, no matter how hard I try to keep it.
The thing is, I know I’ll enjoy winter just fine. Walks with my wife in the stillness of our local forest are always pleasant and I’ve got a perfectly good bike for riding in the snow. I like bundling up in parkas and hats and mitts and pretending I’m a Star Wars character on the ice planet Hoth. And the snowblower is fun the first couple of times I use it (assuming it starts.)
And spring is my absolute favourite time of year. By then, I’m sick to death of winter — February is usually my breaking point — and what are otherwise frigid temps feel downright balmy in the everincreasing days of sunshine. Not all 6 C days are created equal: in November, they are agony, in March, a sign of better things to come.
But that all seems like a long way off, and counting the months on my fingers confirms it. I must not only accept that fall is here but find a way to embrace it, to turn my dread into something more productive and emotionally useful. Either that or I can keep drinking red wine and crawling into bed at 8:30 p.m. As I said, every season has its benefits.