Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Transitions are often hard.
In life, in work, in age, and in seasons.
Autumn is here. We are deep into it. There have already been some local reports of frosts, and the National Weather Bureau says everyone will see some frost by the weekend.
Fall — autumn, whichever you prefer to call it — is a stable period of transition. We can expect it around the same time every year. The day-to-day weather might be unexpected, but we know the nights will get longer, the mornings and evenings will be cooler — and eventually so will the days — and the trees will begin their splendid transition from summer verdant green to fiery autumn golds, oranges and reds to winter barren browns. Look around, it’s already happening.
We plan our wardrobes around frosty mornings and sweltering mid-afternoons. We ready our rakes and keep an eye on the thermostat. For those with children, they settle into school-year routines.
Sometimes the heat hangs on longer than expected or the snow comes early. Sometimes the weather goes from one extreme to the other over the course of a week, making us wonder if autumn is having an identity crisis. Even when the day-to-day changes catch us by surprise, we’re not too surprised, because this is what fall is — the transition from summer to winter, smooth or bumpy as it may be.
Fall is the season when Mother Nature takes out her paints and brushes the land with strokes of brilliant color.
Red.
Yellow.
Gold.
Orange.
Look closely and you’ll see the oaks, the maples, the poplars, the sycamores — all giving the slightest hint of what beauty we’ll behold in the blink of an eye.
Once a new school year begins, we’ve hardly finished mourning the passing of summer when suddenly it’s fall.
We trade the beach for the mountains, leaving swimming behind to start waxing the skis.
And going to football games. Sure, the season starts when humidity fills the stadium like a sold-out game. But it’s the cooler weather of fall that makes a football game, well, a football game.
Between Friday night on the high school field and Monday morning’s alarm, we can catch our college team and our pro team, afternoons and evenings, then anxiously await another Friday for this sacred rite of autumn to begin again.
Fall brings us the thrill of leaves crunching under our feet — and the agony of raking.
Cornstalks.
Hayrides.
Crisp Carolina apples.
And gardens giving the last of this year’s harvest.
Suddenly it’s Halloween with Jack-o’-lanterns, trick-or-treating and haunted everything.
Fall’s cooler temperatures mean hot cocoa, warm soup, fuzzy sweaters and evenings before a toasty fire with slippers and a good book.
But, not just yet as the weatherman says we will have some sunshine and 70 degree weather for the next few days — then autumn and cooler weather returns for the weekend. Enjoy — make the days count!