The Rains Return

I woke early this morning to the sound of rain.

It's early still, but soon our skies will change. The unmade world has already begun to prepare for the coming winter; skeins of geese have begun to knit up in the late summer mornings, the first leaves are curling up, our urban fauna, the squirrels and jays, have become more bold in their search for food.

The return of the rains is a time of year I meet with a bit of melancholy. I like the autumn. I am, on balance, an Octoberish sort of man, and am most in harmony with the world when it is past its summer floresence. But the autumns of my youth, the falls I learned first to love, were the dry, hard, crisp season of the Midwest. The Northwest's sodden November has always been less congenial, and I have never learned to embrace it the same way.

But there's still something very restful about being inside, and warm, and dry, safe abed, listening to the sound of the rain outside.