For many years I lived on the north side of 43 degrees latitude, and you knew without a doubt that fall had arrived. The signs were crystalline, like scraping frost off the windshield in the morning, getting the boat put on its cradle and winterized, and seeing all of the plants up and die leaving a freezing bleak skeletal Cocytus like landscape that will soon be covered in frozen precipitation that lasts for months on end. That nostalgic postcard crap only lasts for about two weeks, then you have to get rid of all of the leaves, order firewood, hunker down, and watch your tan go away. I still have some shoes with salt line stains on them.
