October has been my favorite time of year as far back as I can remember. I have scores of memories from the fall, ranging from Halloween nights as a child to tromping through Henniker New Hampshire with my aunt and cousin while astonishing colors of leaves fluttered down upon us. There has always been something about the season that sets my imagination alight, and October is the heart of that season. It is in part the yearly associations with wild products of imagination such as witches and ghosts, but I think it is more than that. Fall, in the Northern Hemisphere is generally harvest, an intensely important part of survival, even if many of us are distanced from that world now. That carries with it all of the great metaphorical associations of other kinds of harvest. Those things we have planted throughout the year come to fruition. There is more to than that I think too. Winter is a time for introspection, when we are cocooned in our homes away from the flitting hours of sunlight. Summer is a time to embrace the world. Fall sits in between those two points as we head towards introspection but are still encouraged to find meaning as how the subject of that introspection relates to the world.

For me fall, and specifically October is always about the imagination, and its feeling has always been summed up by the following epigraph from Ray Bradbury’s short story collection October Country:

…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.