Waiting for a freeze

“Autumn Leaves’’ (oil on canvas), by Sir John Everett Millais (1829–1896)

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

“Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay.”

―The weirdly sexist opening of the novel Peyton Place (1956), by Grace Metalious (1924-1964), who based the once-thought nearly obscene novel on what she saw and heard living in New Hampshire, with Gilmanton considered the model for Peyton Place.

We’re waiting for a freeze in a few days to send most of the leaves from the trees falling in one fell swoop, as often happens a few days before Halloween.

Years ago, this would be followed by  air  suffused with the  sweet smoke from innumerable leaf-pile fires. Despite the bluish air pollution, worsened by the atmospheric inversions common in the fall, we always looked forward to leave-burning season. Leaf-burning is now  banned in many communities, mostly for public-health reasons.

— Photo by David Hill

As everything else slows down -- even without a frost the grass grows more slowly -- the squirrels seem to scurry faster amidst the acorn caps. (They’ve stashed away most of the acorns (oak nuts).)

I’m looking forward to that mild, still, dry, hazy and pleasantly melancholy time called Indian Summer that follows the first real freeze. It grants the best walking weather of the year. But get out those light boxes to treat your SAD.

High Street in Gilmanton, N.,H., in 1910.

Mount Norwottuck in the Mount Holyoke range, on the border between the towns of Amherst and Granby, Mass.

— Photo by Andy Anderson