To judge by the state of the trees, the date on the calendar, and the prevalence of pumpkin spice – well, everything – fall is now irrefutably in session.

It feels strange to look out the window and watch bright, vibrant colors creep over the trees after months and months of seeing only green. Summer is supposed to be a season full of growth, but really it just seems like it drags on and on in long, sleepy foliage, and every day looks remarkably similar to the one before. Autumn’s arrival is when you really look out and realize, oh, huh, that pumpkin/squash/ other vegetable of choice really has gotten big.

Fall and spring are both seasons of transition and change, when everything is unexpected – you can need a sweater in the morning and end up sweltering by noon, or go from a drizzly, rainy day to a bright one in the mid-70s. Both of them, especially when contrasted with the monotonous climates of winter and summer, highlight that time is passing.

Fall does this even more loudly than spring does, because with spring, everything seems to be quickening with new life and new growth and the future is bearing down so fast it feels rather like being dropped in a rapid current. But fall is slower and steady, and everything is a downward slope towards a long sleep.

The conveniences of modernity – electricity and indoor heating and even the ability to escape to a warmer clime – can often help people overlook the subtler rhythms of the seasons, especially if they don’t work with the land. (Note the use of “subtle” – I’m certainly not suggesting people are easily able to ignore, say, an ice storm, or flooding, or having 2 feet of snow dumped on their doorsteps. Though with the increase of electronic commuting, who could say what will happen in the next 10 years?) That time has passed and things have changed, however, becomes especially obvious when the year ticks over from winter to spring or summer to fall. It’s blatant now that reds and oranges are spreading through the foliage or that the mornings are dipping lower and lower and will eventually bear a frost.

It’ll be less clear as the season presses on and starts sliding down into winter, when one gray day looks much like the next. But for now, when every day brings a new, half-forgotten sight or sound or taste, the change in the air is almost palpable. There’s a sense of melancholy, too, that pervades the air, as though one is made more aware of all the half-finished things that are sliding away and being lost.

And so the year keeps turning and winds around itself and prepares to spin towards another rotation of the seasons.

— Nina Collay is a senior at Thornton Academy who can frequently be found listening to music, reading, wrestling with a heavy cello case, or poking at the keyboard of an uncooperative laptop.