The day is cloudy, damp and noisy. I can hear birds making a racket all over the neighborhood. I’m thinking crows.

Last night I turned on the air-conditioner in my bedroom. The rest of the house was cool enough, but my room was stuffy. This morning I was greeted by the sight of a dead mouse on the downstairs bathroom floor. One of the cats, Maddie I’m guessing, had a busy night.

Today the stars and planets lined up and ushered in the autumnal equinox, the first day of fall, at 5:05 this morning. I know when I was a kid the seasons changed at different times than they do now. Fall began the day we were forced out of bed at a prescribed time, made to eat cereal, dressed in our uniforms and sent off to school with lunches and school bags in hand. That was the end of the glorious days of summer when every day was ours to do with as we wished.

The beginning of winter is a bit hazy. I figure it was when my mother forced us to wear heavy winter coats, mittens and those hats we took off as soon as we were out of sight of the house. With winter came dark afternoons and mornings. I swear my mother used to put us to bed earlier in the winter telling us it was late. Look how dark it is. That ploy stopped working when we learned to tell time. I didn’t like winter afternoons. They meant going inside early when the streetlights turned on triggered by the winter darkness. We spend most of our week days inside, either at school or in the house. Winter was the confining season.

Spring began when we could shed our winter coats, saw buds starting to appear on the trees and afternoons lasted longer. It became official when my mother would start to let me ride my bike to school. I was never really all that impressed by the flowers poking their heads out of the ground or the leaves appearing on the trees. I was just happy to have afternoons when I could play outside before dinner. There was a sense of freedom missing in the winter.

Summer was easy. It was the day school ended.

Autumn is my favorite time of the year here on the cape. Red is the predominant color, all sorts of reds on the maples, in the bogs and on vibrant bushes along the roadside. Here and there are trees bursting with yellow, and I love them for their contrast. I call this my let’s take a ride season when the roads are clear and Gracie and I hit the trail. We sometimes take all rights and other times all lefts. Today I have errands, but then we’re celebrating the new season by taking a ride.