Autumn in Rhode Island

(Originally written Aug 12-15, 2016)

Although fall is my least favorite season, something continuously draws me to the Rhode Island autumns that I secretly miss and long to be a part of once again.  Rhode Island—and the rest of New England for that matter—in the Fall is one of those distinctly American times and places in my mind; Times Square on New Year’s Eve, a baseball stadium on Opening Day, the shore on Labor Day, and County Road 118 on a crisp September day.  It may be just that—a memory—but I recall the soggy gray afternoons driving through puddles on roads with beautiful local names like “County Road 1,” or “Old Main Street,” or a road named after some Pilgrim, my tires shushing through puddles caused by clogged drains—drains full of dead leaves that were so beautiful and ironically full of life a few weeks ago on the trees, now filling the streets and gutters with a dirty brown amalgam of slop.  I remember driving on roads that I can picture Paul Revere racing down, past stone walls that have been there for at least a hundred years—stone walls that were built with care and with pride.  The grayness is somehow revitalizing and energizing in the fact that it slows life down.

Newport in the rain, walking along the cobblestone roads, the bitter damp wind cutting through your jacket and sending a shiver into your bones is horrible, yet for some reason worth all of it.  The rain, the soggy damp autumn day is like no other.  Seasons mean something in my New England memory.  Summer is clearly over, but the thrill of the holidays and the cold first frost of winter still seems like it will never come.  Autumn is purgatory that comes with a harsh realization that lazy summer days spent on Narragansett beach drinking beers of the same name and laid back bonfire-filled nights  are things of the past, while not quite giving us the romantic joys of white winter mornings, Thanksgiving, and the holiday season.

However, with the harsh realization that lazy carefree summers are over, there almost seems to be a sense of rebirth in the autumn months.  The calendar says September 21st is the official start of fall, but ask any New Englander and they’ll say fall starts the second they leave The Cape, or Point Judith, or any of the other seasonal beach towns that line the New England Coast, and prepare for the school year ahead of them.  Back to school shopping is the official end of summer for the adolescents who had just spent two glorious months away from classrooms and homework and the old stone academic buildings of ancient New England.  And for the college student, there’s something strangely academic about September and the forthcoming months in Rhode Island and Mass. and elsewhere.  Maybe because I went to college here, but as the chill winds of September and October creep in; as the days grow shorter and the weather gets damper, I think of the old stone collegiate buildings where professors in tweed jackets and graying beards are leisurely strolling in to; dodging and avoiding puddles on the walkway to not ruin the wing-tip leather shoes.  The library somehow looks smarter and more impressive when it’s covered in rain and the rotting leaves pile up along the northern corner of the building.  The students seem to care a little bit more now that the freedoms of summer nights are a thing of the distant past.  As gray and dreary as a late afternoon in September may be, there’s something uniquely energizing about the entire scene on campus. Students seem to say “well, what else is there to do now but get to work?” The graduate student runs out of the pouring rain with his leather messenger back tucked under his arm as to not get his dissertation wet—the post-bac female leaps over a puddle and cleans off her rain-speckled glasses before attempting to dry off and shake some rain out of her pea coat before entering the library to do some more graduate work.

Rain doesn’t sneak up on you in Rhode Island like it does elsewhere.  While living in Colorado, I would always have to prepare in the morning for any sort of weather that could roll over the Rockies and dump rain or hail or any sort of precipitation no matter the time of year.  But in Rhode Island, you know what the weather’s like almost as soon as you wake up.  You feel it in your bones when it’s raining and damp outside in late September.  You can faintly hear the pitter patter of rain on your window or the shushhhh of tires going through puddles down below on the road.  There’s a dampness in the air that you can smell before you even open your eyes.  And the same holds true for the opposite.  When the air is crisp and clean and skies are a magnificent blue, the cool air energizes you and livens the spirit.  There’s a bit of a jump in your step as you don a flannel shirt and light jacket and aviator sunglasses.  The wind blows, the leaves rustle, and the entire region is alive and buzzing.  

However, as energizing and exciting as fall in New England can be, it’s not without its downsides.  Bart Giamatti wrote in The Green Fields of the Mind that “There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it.”  Now of course he could be talking about growing older (he wrote it when he was 42) and not having as much time to enjoy the leisurely activities that he did in his youth.  It could be a metaphor for running out of time in his life where he is active and healthy.  Or, it could be the fact that as we grow older, and as we slowly start putting away the childish things we held on so dearly in our youth, baseball rushes by seemingly faster than time itself.  As smart and as deep as Mr. Giamatti was, I like to think he meant the latter.  When you’re a kid, the season seems to last an entire lifetime.  The season starts when you’re in one grade, and by the time the World Series comes around, you’re in a brand new grade, with brand new classmates, and possibly a brand new school altogether!  But as you grow older, summers grow shorter and the season begins and ends within a calendar year, not a school year.  And fall brings the harsh realities to all true baseball fans that the World Series, as exciting as it always is, is right around the corner and that before we know it, we will have four straight months of nothing but football talk and Joe Buck yammering on about the Cowboys or the Giants, whichever bandwagon fandom he decides to root for that year.  Our colleagues will turn their attention to fantasy drafts and how many points their wide receivers got them this past week.  But for us, the true baseball fans, there’s nothing as exciting as the World Series, even though we know that it marks the end of yet another remarkable season that helped us through the trying times in our lives throughout the rebirth of spring, the dog days of summer, and the bitter realities of fall.  Just as back-to-school shopping marks the official end of summer for the youngsters, September baseball marks the end of summer for the older baseball fan.  We know that another season has come and gone, and with the exception of a lucky few fan bases, we’ll be cheering from the sidelines or pulling for a team that may have been a mortal enemy merely weeks earlier.  Of course, this harsh truth and the ending of another baseball season isn’t strictly a New England issue, but it seems to hit New Englanders and Red Sox fans harsher than others, and I think that has to do with the weather.  In Miami, the World Series is met with 60 degree days and not a cloud in sight.  They’ve already taken the skis out in Denver just a few miles west of Coors Field. In Arizona, they didn’t even notice that the month rolled over and it’s now actually “Fall.” But in New England, when the Red Sox season comes to a hopefully tumultuous end, the Fenway Faithful are left with clogged drains, dead leaves, and the harsh truths that fall is here and Thanksgiving is still two months away.  

After two brief, glorious months of bouncing between Fenway and Gansett beach, the smells of autumn slowly seep in and find their way into everyday life.  As the weather gets colder, windows become shut, and smells of the house grow stronger and stronger.  Whether it’s the real thing and a pumpkin pie is baking in the oven, or if it’s a Yankee Candle bought at the outlook in Newport a few weeks earlier that sends the scents of autumn through a house, the smells of fall are very distinct.  The smells of burnt skin, sun tan lotion, sea spray and hotdogs at the ballpark quickly get erased and replaced.  No longer do you wake up to the smell of fresh cut grass or that unique, unmistakable smell of the sun beating down on a front yard that is being watered.  No longer do you lotion up for a day spent on the beach, smelling like coconut and singed arm hair.  The sun-lightened hair slowly comes back to its natural color and the smell of bug spray, barbeques and freedom are replaced almost as quickly as they came into your life just a few short months earlier.  Instead of bug spray and sun screen, smells of pumpkin spice and cider enters your pores and fills houses with their autumnal aroma.  I had a professor in Rhode Island that came by way of southern California.  In her first fall on the east coast, she was amazed that everyone in the fall and winter smelled like food all the time.  She realized that houses aren’t shuttered and closed off to the elements in southern California when the summer ends and the falls chill begins to slowly creep in.  In New England, though, storm windows are put up and doors are shut tight by father’s yelling at their teenage boys that “they’re not heating the entire Goddamn neighborhood.” And with the shut windows and air-tight doors, no aroma can escape.  It lays on you, sits on your clothes and in your hair—the smells of home cooking, love, family, and togetherness.  

  Whether it’s driving down hundred-year old roads past a beach that was littered with college students a mere month prior, or walking through campus watching the scuttering of students and professors alike making their way across the quad hurriedly to get out of the rain—there’s a buzz and a hum in the air that only autumn in New England can bring.  The smells that fill the air, the realizations that the shorts need to be put away to make room for sweaters and Dockers; the sad remembrance that with the World Series also comes the end of another baseball season.  I’m not saying these things aren’t present elsewhere in the country, but they sure don’t hit as close to home as the autumns in New England.

8.12-8.15.16

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