With Bygones now just a few days away from release, September is on my mind in a big way — and not just because it happens to the the month in which the main events of the novel take place. No, as a guy who grew up on the East Coast, September has always been something of a transition month for me — that brief period between the awful warmth of August and the beginning of the crispness of October. School starts; leaves begin to hint at changing. At long last, the tourists head home and give the year-round residents a few weeks of quiet along the beaches or in the deep woods.
The shift in seasons happens here in Arizona, of course; it took me a number of years to recognize the subtle changes that take place beyond the more obvious decrease in temperatures. Bushes that had been dormant all year suddenly begin to flower, largely due to the summer monsoons; the quail show off their new extended family as they herd their brood across the top of my rear wall. Sunsets grow slightly earlier and much more dramatic, a nod to the change in the atmosphere as we ready for the shift to a more temperate winter. Browns shift to greens, creating a rich earth-toned palette that I find I cannot get enough of.
There will be a few more surprise days of triple digits between now and October, just enough to shock the first year students at my university; while I take no joy in watching the ill-prepared trudge, bedraggled, across the grassy mall at the center of campus, I do often marvel at how our campus visits for prospective students always seem to be scheduled in January. Then again, UMaine did campus tours in July, showing off their beautiful campus with not even the slightest hint of the six-foot snowbanks that would be everywhere come November.
One other memory that remains strong for me is shaving old crayons and placing the pieces between two sheets of wax paper also holding the largest, most colorful leaves I could find in the yard; of watching my mother fire up the iron and carefully press it to the paper, melting the crayons into a marvelous mix of colors that complemented the leaves I’d worked so hard to gather. Every time I smell a crayon I think of those times, and wonder if that sort of artwork is still produced in homes every fall.
Hopefully it is.