A week…

In a week it’s Columbus Day! While that may not have huge significance everywhere, in New England, it means “Close it all down, it’s all over and winter’s almost here!!”  The restaurants in the area will drop by about 1/3 as owners of the local roadside snack trucks close up and disappear until spring. I’ve never much thought of where they go…perhaps they fly south for the winter and work as “Snacks Vans for Snow Birds”, that particular breed of people who also join the fowl in flying south for the winter to destinations such as far away. Florida preferring to stay there and return up north here in the following summer. Maybe these rolling restaurants hibernate like a bear all fattened up from a summer long fest of frying any and everything they can find to produce sustenance for them and their owners through the winter. What I do know is that things will slowly get quieter up here.  The road through Smugglers Notch will close and render that amazing part of the world accessible only by bike or foot (unless that’s illegal which I honestly don’t know so don’t take that as a suggestion to commit a crime…) although maybe it’s already closed because of the government shutdown… something else I don’t know. But prices will fall for the tourists and we’ll get another wave of them in, hoping that the fall foliage peaked late this year that they might score a bargain of price and good autumn colors – and yet they are willing to forego sitting at some of the outdoor eateries that will either be gone or be back serving inside the lovely smaller indoor setups that they transform back into for winter.  Many things will quickly and quietly change the next few weeks as outdoor furniture is exchanged with plowing reflectors and markers in the ground before it freezes hard. Christmas stuff is already in the shops and a massive increase will happen after. Columbus day to the point that Halloween paraphernalia is almost lost among it already as companies will hope that Christmas decorations will be up earlier than ever.  I for one love Christmas and love having up decorations so maybe we’ll see go in earlier this year so we can enjoy the effort (and hot chocolate and chai and yummy treats).  Days are so noticeably shorter now that when the clock changes back, later on in November, it will be quite dark and cold in the afternoons. How nice then to have pretty Christmas lights up by then, eh? Definitely want them up before “fall back” on the clocks.  Must remember that.

Let you mind wander some in the next few weeks and observe things you might otherwise not have seen. Look for the imperceptible changes that will slip by so smoothly and quickly that it will feel like fine silk brushing against your arm… Just a brush and then fall is over, everything is brown and, although many don’t like the snow, each of us secretly prays for it to come quickly and blanket our now muted landscape with a shimmering layer of iridescent magic so we’ll hopefully remember those brighter times in life rather than the exposed raw underlayer beneath that for so many trigger depression and difficult memories.

It’s fall.  In just a week it will be Columbus Day –  earlier this year than most and the path through the holidays and all the changes that will happen will slip by now…faster than ever.