Happening to rather like Autumn, I can certainly relate to the poem by the Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley (1849 - 1916), whose second stanza of the poem by the same name as the first half of his last sentence (er, did you manage to understand that?) goes…

They’s something kind o’ harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here–
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;
But the air’s so appetizin’, and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the early autumn days
Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock–
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

The first day of March is the first day of Autumn for those of us living Down Under.

It has not been a marvellous summer in my neck of the woods - far too much wind and many dull, rainy, days. Well, far too much for a proper summer, that is. But as one who has just had three of them straight in a row, I guess I don’t have much cause for complaint. I heard that the winter I missed was bitterly cold. Cold is OK, but not bitterly cold. And I like that Autumn is here… just a cooler version of the so-called summer we’ve had.

One of my favourite past-times is walking along the beach when the weather is brewing up something inclement to unleash upon us. I love crunching the empty pipi shells underfoot, having the wind whipping my hair about my face, the sea spray stinging my lips with the taste of salt… seagulls soaring and circling in little eddies, riding the thermals overhead, diving to land among their squawking brothers busy squabbling at the rubbish bins for scraps of yesterday’s lunches left behind by brave picnickers undaunted by rough weather. Tom, Dick and Harry Gull may fight for possession of a potato chip, but there is no sign of Richard Bach’s Jonathon, of course. He has far better things to do. Neither do I have any wish to squabble for left-overs. Wherever Jonathon was, I am too… strolling along the shore in the biting breeze, savouring the touch of nature through my skin and speaking to my soul.

Yes, I have written of these things before in here. As the days get cooler and the white-caps rough up the harbour, it is good to get out and have the mental cobwebs blown away. Peeling off shoes and socks I stand up to the ankles in the edges of the bubbling surf, the tide pulling back against my heels, the sand tunnelling under my feet. I am invigorated.

To experience through one’s skin is primary; the point where personal boundaries meet and become defined, where contact is made, and life is discovered to be real. To feel the wind, the salt, the sand, the sea… it is right there that Mother Nature touches me.