I love fall.
There’s just something about the crisp air and sunny-but-chilly days that motivates me.
The fact that it always motivates me to want to do things that I have no interest in is beside the point.
I don’t know why this happens, but it does, every year. At the very first sign of autumn, I start making plans for activities I will never actually take part in.
“You know what would be cool? We should go all to a pumpkin patch,” I’ll announce over dinner.
“No,” my companion will say, regardless of who it is.
“Why not?” I’ll dejectedly ask. “Because you don’t want to?”
“No,” he or she will tell me. “Because you don’t.”
And it’s true. I really have no desire to hang out in a field, pumpkin-filled or otherwise.
Same goes for apple-picking, another pastime the season makes me delusional about.
“Come on,” I said to my friend, Lindsey. “We could make cider with our bare feet and stuff.”
“You don’t know how any of this works,” she said, laughing. “It’s not wine and they aren’t grapes. You can’t stomp on apples. Also, you hate cider.”
Some people just wanted to ruin everything with facts.
I mean, it’s fall. Anything is possible!
Like, maybe I’d enjoy attending a football game, building outdoor structures with my bare hands, hiking in the woods, wearing plaid and spending silent time in a cabin in some remote place with a pond out back.
Surely, the presence of a few orange leaves and some ambient rustling sounds would make all that intensely enjoyable, right?
I can decorate my home with dried corn products, all stalks and multicolored ears.
Hold my mug with two hands and smile into the steam.
Make centerpieces out of gourds.
Get a group together for a maize maze, then invite them over for roasted chestnuts.
I could break my lease, move into a house with a fireplace, and sit in front of it on pillows, clad head to toe in flannel, while listening to soft jazz.
Who cares that I hate these things in actuality. Autumn will make them awesome.
The mid-weight jacket I’m wearing says so.
I don’t know exactly what weird mojo is at work when it comes to this weather-induced lobotomy. It’s probably the same black magic that always makes me wildly nostalgic for college this time year, when to be honest, beyond the skin and the metabolism, being in my 20s again doesn’t sound that appealing.
Could it be that fall just does this to everybody? Convinces us all that padded vests are flattering and hayrides are fun? That, because there’s a slight nip in the air, we should all wear mittens use phrases like “nip in the air?”
A sort of autumn-hazed hive mind that makes us believe cornstalks look pretty on porches?
If so, perhaps it’s a good thing we only ever get about two weeks of it before winter shows up.
Katie McDowell is a lifestyles writer/copy editor for The Dominion Post. Email her at kmcdowell@dominionpost.com.
