Yes Mom, I too am a fan of these beautiful Michigan autumn days.

Of my blogging efforts, my mom, the retired (and amazing) school teacher recently wrote,

"How about a piece on these fabulous September days? God how I love September in Michigan. All the years I taught, September would fly by and I never noticed. Now it is my favorite month."

Yes mom, I too am a fan of these gorgeous September days.  What's not to love?  This being Michigan, the Lord has finally turned off the "Sweat Lodge" setting for our pleasant peninsula and we can actually enjoy a brisk 68 degree day with no humidity and a light breeze.  Michigan is perhaps the only place on Earth where you can get a sunburn AND a windburn on the same day.

And this being Michigan, we can pretty much enjoy high school and college football anywhere in the State on any given fall weekend.  Unfortunately, this being Michigan, it is also virtually impossible to enjoy pro-football at any time of the year unless you are from the UP where they eat pasties and root for Green Bay.

But in Michigan, pro football woes aside, we get to drink our fill at the nearest cider mill each autumn as we prepare for Halloween and the onset of yet another Michigan winter.  Who among us hasn't eaten a warm doughnut or a caramel apple in Parshallville, St Johns, Hartland, or Northville?

Another terrific Michigan fall tradition is the changing of the season.  One of the things that makes this place really special is the leafy fireworks that splash through our hardwoods and color our lawns each fall.  Each year we look upon the same scenes and feel renewed by the changing of the colors - one last terrific "Hurrah!" before winter sets in and strips the leaves from the trees, turns the highways black with grime, and buries us in foot after foot of that white stuff that some people really seem to enjoy.  It's like rounding a third turn in a four turn race and the crowd giving you a standing ovation.

A glance out my window shows that the oak tree across the street is once again headed toward a fabulous crimson, yellow and orange farewell before it hibernates for the winter.  I have lived in this house for four autumns now, and every year that tree in particular just takes my breath away.

In the fall, we get all things good here - pumpkin pie, jumping in leaf piles, school and a welcome break from the heat and humidity.  It's our chance to slow down and take in the colors, flavors and sensations if we elect to do so. A graceful, gentle celebration of one more year in the books as we wind down toward winter and the New Year.  It is the calendar's warm twilight.

It is also the time of baseball's greatest season - the post season.  And a Michigan autumn is the time for the best golf anywhere.  For me, it's also a time to remember my awesome school teacher mom - who on one particularly beautiful autumn day when I was about 12 years old, chased down the school bus on her way to work and told her children "Get in the car, today is the kind of day we only get once in a while, so let's do something fun..." That day we all skipped school (except Pat, who had a test) and went to Greenfield Village for the day.

Greenfield Village in Fall, Dearborn, Michigan

That day we spent crunching around the leaves in Dearborn is one of my happiest autumn memories.  Not because of what we did there. I had been there many times before and have been there many since.  The memory isn't what we did there, mom.  It's what you did to get us there.  The teaching that you did that day in presenting a lesson whose object was to seize a moment because you never know if that moment is ever going to come around again.  Well, that is one of the greatest reasons why I love autumn in Michigan. Because it reminds me of that one day in particular. 

Lastly, I should add that my birthday is also in the fall, and please prove to me that any day has ever actually been made worse by the eating of birthday cake and the opening of presents.  So, for me, another reason to love fall :-)

Thanks for stopping by my blog.  I hope you and yours are enjoying the fall weather and making the most of your time together.  You never know when that one little thing you do will end up being the one big thing that sticks with someone forever.

Take care,

Dennis