Fall is here, I know because I can taste it. You can taste it too, find a little glen in the woods and take a deep breath, you can taste the slightly sweet rot in the air. See the beginnings of fall drift down through the maple and hemlock foliage, feel the damp thick bed of ferns.
You can do those things sure, or like me you can eat a fresh apple. It was a honey crisp picked by the kids at the local orchard, an apple this fresh reminds you how bad store bought apples are…..especially the puny red delicious imported from south American in March. The apple was perfect, crisp sweet and sour, the size of a soft ball, with a funky pattern on the outside. It wasn't perfect to look at, you would never see this apple at Giant, but it was perfect, and the smell alone brought a whaft of memories too long to list.
Now that apples are here I’m on a quest to eat them constantly. So far I have had them in salad, on grilled cheese, with peanut butter, roasted in a fire, with cheese, with Nutella, in tomatoes soup, and most luxuriously; plain carved by the pocket knife, sitting at Wolf Rocks on the Appalachian Trail.
What is fall for you? Pumpkin spice ale, Marching bands and high school football, your favorite sweater, back to school, hunting season, Bloomsburg fair, end of the federal fiscal year….. time to fire up the soccer mom van?
Fall is a reclaiming of the out doors. The dank oppressive humidity of late summer slips into cool evenings and pleasant days. The water is warm and the air fresh, the fish are biting and the bugs are not. Fall is change.
I like fall. Fall is the promise of cool mornings, sunny days, cool enough to fire up the oven. Fall is soup made with fresh ingredients; good for the body and the soul. Fall is the calm before the chaos of the holiday season.
Grab you boots and get outside. Get up on the mountain, out on the water, muck around the city.
Enjoy it while you can, enjoy it with an apple.
