Since June, I've been urging fall along, willing it to arrive.
Wind events. Rain. Complex skies. Cool temperatures. Early nights.
We're robbed of true autumn in Utah. What we get is beautiful--the maples and oaks deepen the aspen gold into an ombre of foliage that smacks of the East Coast--but it's too still, too hot. The skies are glass-eye blue--there's no strife in it.
I want whipping wind and sideways rain. Mad dashes from the driveway to the house. Muddy-pawed puppies making for vacuuming marathons.
When I close my eyes, I see a wild shoreline--Lewis or the Hebridies. I feel rain on my face, strong wind at my back. I smell wet wool. There's salt in the air, and the pungent smoke of peat fires.
But what I'm longing for isn't the discomfort. I'm too soft for that. What I want is the shelter that comes after the suffering--the comfort of feeling warm after being cold, of drying off after getting soaked though with rain.
That's what I'm looking forward to.
