Looking out the study window I notice the houses in a nearby development, about a third of a mile away, are visible behind a line of tall trees.
With the foliage gone, it's as though the other development has moved closer; it's now part of the study-window view in a way that wasn't true before. On top of that, it's a windy day, and at 3:30 in the afternoon it already seems dim outside.
Around here, the autumn-winter transition is usually drawn out -- over time, the number of chilly, blustery days begins to outnumber the autumnal ones, though as late as Christmas some years it's been warm enough for light jackets. Up in New England, the changeover's more abrupt -- just like that, it always seemed to me, the apple orchards close and the ski jackets come out. Every year there'd be one desolate day when it was clear that the leaf-turning was now at an end -- all the trees picked clean.
When I lived in NH, I felt autumns were cropped. Hard for a Marylander to get used to. But there's something to be said for it -- wake up and it's winter. Clear demarcations. Four distinct seasons, not our mid-Atlantic blur.
No wonder they built Washington here.
