Mounting the Everest or Ready for a Fall.

When I woke up this morning, summer had decided to take a break and instead make room for a whiff of fall. Which I completely didn't mind - it gave me an excellent reason to try out my Jeffrey Campbell Everests! Let me tell you, these will without a doubt become the foundation of my fall wardrobe.

I honestly feel sorry for everyone living in a climate that doesn't include a real fall season. It's by far my favorite out of the four. I love it when the air starts getting crisp and chilly, I love the changing colors of the leaves, and oh, I so love the clothes! No other season comes close to the fall wardrobe - honestly, it's the one time of year that I thoroughly enjoy fashion, and might even buy a fashion magazine or... five.

But I think what I adore more than anything about the last few months before winter arrives is that we all know they're fleeting. Winter, for me, is all about enduring the torture of the cold and darkness, summer is simply too lazy and dull (plus usually warmer than I prefer, yeah, I'm annoyingly hard to please when it comes to temperature). And then we have spring, my second favorite season, well... spring is a little bit like being stuck in a waiting room, queue ticket in hand. All the signs that it's soon going to be our turn - in this particular metaphor "our turn" would be the arrival of summer - are of course properly aaaaaaw:ed and ooooooh:ed, but they're still just indications of what's to come, distractions while we're waiting for the "real treat". It's just not fair! The flowers and the melting snow are such fantastic wonders, but I don't feel like they're enjoyed the way they deserve to be. Not by others, and not by me. Every year when springtime comes, I forget that I'm actually not at all crazy about summer, and waste these breathtakingly magical months leading up to June holding out for what I incorrectly believe is something better down the line.

I think the British word autumn is amazingly beautiful, though I still prefer fall. Because that's exactly what it is. As summer releases its grip, we're suddenly in a free fall, plummeting against months and months of freezing darkness. We're surrounded by these incredibly vivid shades of red and yellow, and we know that any day the leaves are going to turn brown and crumble under the thick soles of our boots. Therefore, we savor each moment of beauty, we appreciate every last trace of summer, we finally start to relish the small things: that we don't yet need to wear gloves or change the tires of our cars, that our lungs don't hurt from the cold when we take a deep breath, that the sun has not yet set as we leave from school or work. That we still might have a few more heartbeats left within our chests.