The old dog blinked at me while holding his head upright in a very stoic way, but slowly those eyelids were growing heavier and heavier. His velvety chin finally gave in and collapsed against the dog bed beneath him. It was that sort of a night.
The transition to autumn is that way. These earlier nights call us to find cozier things to do in the gold light of a lamp. Read a book maybe, doze in a soft dog bed, or in my case…bake something.
It is the Wind’s Fault, Really
It started in this evening, blowing cool and clean across my back. I thought, Oh good. Dry the sweat. Then I realized there wasn’t any sweat. I dropped the hand shovel and sat upright, like the little brown pointy-eared bunnies that live along the edge of my woods do when they sense movement.
No sweat? What could it mean? I scanned the horizon. A bit of cotton candy clouds tinged in the growing gold glow of the setting sun were skittering across a blue sky. What was missing? It looked the same as it had a week earlier.
Then the thought hit me like a bolt of lightning from a fast moving thunderstorm on a Floridian summer afternoon: humidity. The heavy humidity was gone. The air was as light as a feather and as fresh as a warm roll newly out of the oven and slathered over with a thick pat of butter.
This could only mean one thing. Finally, after all the stores had been teasing us with their plastic yellow and red maple leaves—trees that won’t even consider blushing around here until January—and still very green farms have been rolling out bales of hay for fall festivals, autumn has arrived. With that realization I promptly dropped the flowerpot in my hand, and the gardening gloves went with it.
“It is time,” I announced aloud as I walked through the yard toward the house.
I might have been doing a bit of planning—a bit of list making—prior, but the real enthusiasm had not been truly possible. But suddenly, finally, the season’s tradition could begin. I had no choice. When fall arrives, so begins the baking.
A Nearly Full Autumn Moon was Peeking Through the Trees
And that same wind was blowing fragments of cotton candy across it now and then. The clouds that awaited their turn in front of the moon were cast in silver light and looked something like castles up there. A sky full of castles. I saw them from the window, and I could hear the soft rhythm of the wind chimes from the open backdoor. The bamboo has a deep clatter, and the metal columns have high pitched chirps—they all have such personality when the wind caresses them.
The wind in summer is an angry mess coming in gusts that just clatter up the wind chimes in a cacophony of being rushed, and nothing satisfying is achieved. The sound in autumn is much prettier. The slow and steady gently rising movements of an autumn wind really know how to make things sing.
I noticed all of this as I pulled the cover off the bowl and felt the lovely soft squish of newly risen dough against my fingertips. Dough is to fingers as wind chimes are to ears. They are subtle sensory experiences that have profound effects on the mind. They trigger memories of past times in their company. Or, they slow us down. Subtle things require a bit of focus to really appreciate their soft-spoken qualities. They require silence, and stillness, and deliberation.
That is what fall does to us. It is a gentle transition into the turn inward. This body of mine is preparing to go dormant for a few months as it settles into that golden lamp light at an earlier time each day. Dormant externally, but inward there is so much work to be done. There are subjects that haven’t been touched since last winter and are growing dusty on the coffee table. There are stories to be written.
And, of course, there is yeast bread to do its slow and steady rise, like the gentle movement of the autumn wind on those chimes.
Cinnamon Rolls Always Hurt a Little
But the first evening of autumn deserves them. It hurts to squish down that beautiful work the yeast did into a flattened out sheet of dough. But then there is the pleasure of slowly and steadily rolling it up, each hand movement modeled after the autumn wind, drawing that cylinder of dough higher and higher until it reaches a summit.
So the first batch of pumpkin cinnamon rolls just wafted its warm scent throughout my house on a windy evening that was almost…ever so slightly…kind of…cool. It’s official: humidity has vacated; autumn has arrived.
And now to conclude with the most cliché southern phrase I can think of: Happy Florida Fall, Y’all.