Lack of Prescience

Today I thought about autumn. I rememebered October in Milwaukee, where I went to college. Nights walking home from the musty Johnston Hall basement, through the crisp air made clean by the fewer cars. Patches of snow, maybe, or the promise of snow, and huddled in to a coat, or, if it was a fun night (which it usually was), wide open to the wind and flushed with excitement.

There was something innocent, or naive, or fresh about autumn. It was the cusp of winter, the end of summer. It was the start of the school year, the return to all the old haunts. It was all the memories resurrected after the long vacation.

It doesn't happen anymore, and not just because I live in a place with no distinct seasons. It doesn't happen anymore because there isn't a summer vacation, or a regular, life-changing experience of leaving a freshman and coming back a sophomore.