Driving up Spring Street the other day, a wonderful realization occurred, it was a sign we are half way through autumn. It's now easy to find a place to park in the good section where the parallel parking allows one to glide in, then glide out, not having to do the Spring Street, angle-parking, back up into traffic-exiting-a-full-ferry, thing. Sitting for a moment behind the wheel after parking, I breathed out a long breath and smiled with a warm feeling of contentment. A happy surprise. The visitors are gone.
"The visitors are gone" does not apply to family and friends, who come to the island to break up the mild monotony of the bucolic life. It only applies to strangers. And although life changes in the islands each year with the departure of the visitors, life here does, in fact, depend on the kindness of strangers. Tourists pad the revenue stream here, of course, but also, there's the vitality a boatload of happy vacationers brings with it. The flux in population is part of what make the San Juan Islands what they are, and for the most part, visitors are happy people. So when they arrive it's good, and when they depart it's good as well.
The study of autumn continues, and as the last of the visitors watch wistfully from the rear deck of the ferry as it detaches itself from the dock and chugs away, other signs of the season reveal themselves. Leaves of yellow, orange, and red now litter the streets, a good kind of litter. The air has gone from crisp to brittle. It's cold. 34 degrees this morning with eight weeks to go until the equinox. The amount of daylight is still quite tolerable. Equinox to equinox is twenty six weeks. That means it's been eighteen weeks since June 23rd with enough light in the sky to say hooray! Looking at a year, that's 36-16, a reasonable showing for any sport, and the game's not over yet.
Speaking of sports, for many, they are an enjoyable, or exciting, or even ecstatic element of the fall season. For me, not so much. Scratch that, make that not at all. I did not force my child who preferred picking daisies on the soccer field to persist until the all American competitive bug bit. One season of freezing my own buns off on the sidelines was enough for me. I'm a sit by the fire, have another cup of cocoa kind of cold weather aficionado. I do however, relish a good analogy, and keeping score of how autumn is doing on the scoreboard of the seasons quite appeals.
So let's look and see how the game's progressing. The end of Daylight Savings Time is just around the corner which means less light for the commute home. Technically another shift into winter. My commute home is exactly ninety seconds, so not a biggie there. Besides, "Spring forward, Fall back" is the better end of the deal; it's the one time each year we get an extra hour of sleep. How could anyone not like that? And the end of Daylight Savings Time means more light in the morning for a little longer. It also does the opposite of what the beginning of Daylight Savings Time does, it shifts the daily schedule back an hour. Much easier for the body to adapt to than getting up an hour earlier in spring. Another point on the score board for autumn. But finding a place to park on Spring Street? That's a touchdown for Autumn. That's six points for autumn, I believe.
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