Season of Mist
A triumphant ode to autumn from a New England expatriate in the South
I miss Autumns. There is magic to autumns — real ones, not like what we get here in Florida. I’m talking real Falls, that slow, winding cadence that takes from the hot summer to the brutal cold of winter, a series of semi-seasons between Labor Day and Veterans Day when the leaves change and the smell of decay, smoke, and apples fill the very air.It makes you feel alive.
The days are still somewhat warm, the sun fulfilling, but then as evening comes the cold, damn New England night begins to crawl over you like a corpse in a B-Movie horror film, taking you and transforming you into something different.
Shorts get packed away and brightly colored tees discarded for a favorite hoody and worn- out jeans.Memories of leaf piles from years past dot the landscapes of imagination, and you know that fresh apple cider is waiting for you after a long day of raking the yard.
There is a sense of joy and whimsy when the fogs begin to roll in, as you begin putting together costumes and scoping out where to leave the extra disguises to get more candy. You confirm with peers about which houses were best last year to get candy from, and there is always one kid who made a list and kept reciting it in their heads year after year after year.
I have lived outside of New England now for ten years. I have experienced Halloween and the Autumn now in different states and in different weather patterns, and it is always a disappointment, especially here in the land of flowers. First off, it is too light here at night. There is no cold; makeup runs off like melting wax dummies in horror films. The kids shuffle along, endless armies of them all hitting the same neighborhoods with a mechanical precision. It is not like my youth.
I was born in October, in a snowstorm just east of the Medicine Bow Range (far, far away from my beloved New England), blessed with a full head of hair. My first brother was born in October, out on the high oil plains. My father was born in October, with a fully grown tooth. Countless other family members were born in this month: at one point in my family we had a run from the 5th to the 22nd on birthdays. When you are a kid it adds to the magic of the month; as an adult you realize that way too many parents decided to keep warm in winter in ways that created you.
My happiest memories growing up were always in the Autumn, and not just because of the birthdays or the holidays — there was just something about it. Autumn in New England hits hard. It is brutal, it is fast, it is great. It is just a sense of finality and wonder. I swear, you can hear an entire town sigh in unison the first time you smell a chimney light up. The kids return to the woods to play their last games of Capture the Flag and take long strolls with crushes through brush that falls down from the heavens.
Then the cinnamon smell begins, a ghostly smell of vanilla follows, and the smells of cooking apples fill the air as an entire region begins to feast on apple pies and apple crisps. Caramel begins to ooze out of pores in the skin, and beards change to match the falling leaves.
The sounds of football and marching bands float onto the night air, and field hockey skirts cover the girls. Webs of silk, cotton and fiberglass begin to cover houses: the drab house you think is ugly all year becomes a place or wonder and dark magic. Fake cemeteries spring up overnight, haunted by overly cartoonish caricatures of Universal Monsters. An electricity begins to build around you, even as you walk with your crush’s hand in your own.
Then you hear it, that audio cassette of a cackling voice, and a fucking flood hits you of a love of horror and being in love with being scared. Countless haunted houses and hayrides pop up; campgrounds raise from their slumber to become tourist attractions for those who enjoy the macabre.
The energy builds like a crescendo, louder, faster, more violent with every week until it explodes in a sea of costumes, candies and laughter. There is no rhyme or reason to the armies of children and teens as they come knocking on doors. There is no organization, just a two-hour limit to get as much as you can, to lord your haul over your friends and feast on candies for months to come (we still had a third of a pillowcase of candy left one April).
By now the nights are far longer than the days, and you are starting to feel winter creeping in over you, but you do not care. You are in love with life and celebrating every moment you can with bonfires and horror movie marathons. Your heart beats faster and faster, your teeth rotting. Then it is over and death begins to take over.
It isn’t the same death that fills the October holidays, but the creeping death of winter as all colors begin to fade and grey takes over. The cold begins to hurt your nostrils.
Thanksgiving is the last grasp of sanity before it begins. Like Halloween, December is a Season in itself.
The South has none of this magic. Halloween in the South feels forced, it feels overly organized, and it lacks magic. Yes, kids and adults still dress up, there is still some romance to it all, but there is a magic missing. This is a mystery that eludes me, and it is impossible to describe to someone who did not grow up in the Northeast. Most of the South has not witches, or haunted graveyards (at least in the same way). Orlando, Florida has all the Haunted Houses you could ask for, themed to match your tourist dollars. But there are no hills to run away to hide and gossip, the nights do not get cold enough for good bonfires, and the ghost stories are not the same.
It’s like walking into a bookstore and seeing a sea of beautiful books in one location, but in the next store you find only objects painted to look like books. I wonder if they experience magic here that wasn’t created by an Imagineer or think tank.
Is it because there is no change in seasons here? Florida is a land of perpetual summer after all.
The Carolinas at least had a cool breeze , but even there Autumn felt manufactured and almost fake, probably due to the lack of apples in the air. I could hand out candy in shorts there, whereas I remember it snowing one year in New England.
I wonder if it is because this land was not settled by Celts, like the North was. Is the difference because of the Irish, Travelers, and Scots that make up the North, the history with their pagan traditions? Is the ancestral memory of Samhain floating in our collective unconscious?
Halloween, in its roots, was made to scare the dead and mock what fears us. Autumn is very much about that as well: the leaves begin to fall, the world turns grey as it dies for the next several months, its casket made of white ice crystals. We celebrate the fall in order to hide our fears of the upcoming winter. I find it a very fitting metaphor for life (just ask Simon and Garfunkel in their song “A Hazy Shade of Winter”).
It is ironic in a way, you would think Florida would be the place to cherish scaring away the winters of our lives. America was born in New England, it was bred and conceived in the mists, fogs and memories. It is where the magic of the nation resides. Every stone, every clearing is part of it. There is a memory, it is my memory.