Falling in Love With Fall

I love fall. When October rolls around everything becomes magic. I step out the door, taste the crispness in the air, and it gives me a spring in my step.  When its fall, all I want to do is take long walks through the brilliantly colored trees and then snuggle up in a corner of my favorite coffee shop and watch people go by as the day darkens. Fall makes me feel like I’ve stepped into a different world. A world where I have endless amounts of time to ponder. I become like Thoreau in the fall, stepping outside of myself and examining the world to expand my soul.  This may sound cheesy, but when I am surrounded by the bright trees and the clouded fall sun, I feel that the world is embracing me.

However, for every high, there is a low. Sometimes all this thinking makes me melancholy. As I walk the streets in the rain and watch the drops collect on leaves I mourn over the disconnect between where I am and where I want to be. I think everyone—no matter what stage of life they are in—does this. It is not that I think I have a bad life, it is just that sometimes my dreams seem so far. Fall is when I worry about what I’m doing with my life. It’s when I wonder if I’m really capable of doing everything that I said I wanted to when I was a fresh faced teenager just getting my first glimpse of adulthood. I know that as someone who is soon to be 24, there is still plenty of time for me, but it can be hard to remember that when the ugliness and rejection of the job market slaps you in the face.

When you wrap together all of this joy and sorrow into one sloppy, beautiful package—that’s what fall is to me.  It may seem odd to the reader that I exclaim how much I love fall when it brings up such contradicting feelings for me—but that is the exact reason it is my favorite season.  In just a few short months I am able to release a giant bundle of emotions, and it is extremely cathartic. I need to both run gleefully through piles of fallen leaves, and sit in a coffee shop crying while it pours outside. Fall brings out all the different facets of my personality. The child who still wriggles with excitement when she gets to go to the pumpkin patch and corn maze, as well as the aspiring writer who spouts sonnets about the changing seasons, and the newlywed who can’t wait to try all sorts of new baking recipes that include pumpkin. I just can’t help falling in love with fall.

*If you want to have your own awesome fall experience just follow my simple rule. Music is magic. Below, I will post my current favorite songs to listen to in the fall. All you have to do is put them on your iPod, find a beautiful fall nature walk, and press play. Enjoy!

It’s Time-Imagine Dragons

The Boxer– Simon and Garfunkel

Rivers and Roads– The Head and The Heart

Sigh No More– Mumford and Sons

All These Things That I’ve Done-The Killers

If I Ever Leave This World Alive-Flogging Molly

White Winter Hymnal-The Fleet Foxes

I Won’t Give Up-Jason Mraz

Let That Be Enough-Switchfoot

Landslide-Dixie Chicks

Where The Streets Have No Name-U2