Summer's End

I'm sitting on the lawn outside my dorm at school. That may sound lifelessly urban, and I suppose it would be in a lot of schools: but my school is settled right in the middle of a country Tennessee community, without a fence and sometimes without even a road separating them. There is beauty in this place and moment. The sun has set and the sky is glowing russet and pale blue. The woods are so close across the road that I can hear the cicadas humming. A flock of geese just flew overhead, calling the evening bugle of summer as they sped southward. I guess this is really my Beginning of Autumn post, which seems to have become something of an annual tradition. I didn't intend it that way; but for some reason there is a day or a set of days as summer ends that remind me of the season changing and make me want to write about it. Perhaps it is because, as Chesterton said, you realize how much you love something when you begin to lose it. I don't notice how much I enjoy summer until a cool evening or a red leaf on the ground reminds me that it is passing. Perhaps that is why I love autumn so much. After the peace of summer, it is a reminder that the seasons change; that the years turn; that time passes. And that reminder makes me enjoy the seasons, and the years, and time itself, all the more.