Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

  I went for my first walk in ages tonight.  The last real walk I remember going on, was a December morning, when Halloween was being discarded.  I remember seeing pumpkins by garbage cans, empty spaces where ghosts once flew.  The ghosts of ghosts, you might say.  The world hasn't looked the same, since then. But now, now it is autumn. It is that magical time when September shifts into almost-October; goes from being my birthday month to almost-Halloween.  I walk tonight, and I see the beginnings.  Not everyone has decorated yet, but it is starting. The world is beginning to look like a place I recognize once more, and old friends are appearing on lawns or in doorways, or peering down at me from windows.   I'm not sure if I'm waking up from a dream, or have fallen back to sleep.  But whatever it is, it feels good. The best I have felt in a long time. "Welcome back," I say to the decorations, and to autumn and Halloween, and to myself. "It fe...

  Today, we stand at the beginning of the road. The start of something we've anticipated for so long, it sometimes felt like it was never going to arrive.  Today the sky darkens in the most inviting shade of gray, bringing a breeze and a gentle flutter of leaves just starting to turn shades of yellow or red or brown.  Our memories harken us back to the place that feels like some fictional dreamworld each year, a world ablaze in color, celebrating the things that most people don't dare speak of, when it isn't time. It's almost hard to believe this is the same world we've existed in all summer long, with its endless days of blinding sunlight and green, green, green, as far as the eye can see.  Some are sad about summer's end, but we know it won't go without a fight. There will still be hot days, still moments where the light is too bright, although the summer has lasted so long already. Today we see the start of the most fleeting season. Summer clings on, leav...

 There’s a certain energy that comes with the beginning of autumn for me.  Once the air starts getting cooler, pumpkins start appearing, neighbors start decorating, and the world starts smelling of pumpkin and apple, I feel myself bursting at the seams. Though I know it’s impractical, I am suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to everything at once. I want to go on spooky adventures, spend hours at a time outside, try on costumes, photograph every spooky piece of decor I own then go shop for more, drink all the pumpkin spice lattes, etc., all in the matter of a few seconds. It’s a feeling that I think most people would refer to as “spring fever”, but I’ve always gotten mine in autumn. For some, autumn is viewed as a season of death. But for me, it’s always what breathes new life into me, and I’m never more alive than I am during this time of year, particularly as it begins. I asked myself today, why the beginning of autumn sends me into more of a frenzy than the actual celebrat...