Falling for Fall

illustration by Emma Niggley

I went into Trader Joe’s the other day with the sole intention of purchasing Vitamin C, almond milk, cold brew, and maybe some Scandinavian Swimmer’s as an “I completed my first month of college and didn’t die” treat. Akin to spontaneous trips to Target, I found myself with an overflowing basket of fall-inspired treats: pumpkin oat milk, foliage-shaped tortilla chips, butternut squash mac and cheese (because who doesn’t love to be tricked into eating their vegetables in a fun way?). In a direct rebuttal to singer Andy Williams, fall is simply the most wonderful time of the year. 

However, for those of you who have the unbearable burden of living in a city with a temperate climate, it’s hard to get in the autumn spirit when the weather never dips below 75 degrees until December — if you’re lucky. Palm trees are too cool to become arboreal chameleons, and it’s hard to see the world in a warm color palette when you’re constantly wearing sunglasses. Knitted cardigans are traded in for tank tops and jean shorts. Pumpkin patch photos are replaced with beach photoshoots. And if you’re craving a hot pumpkin spice latte, you better enjoy it with an abundance of ice cubes.  

Despite where you are, there’s just something so wonderfully special about this time of year. Maybe it’s because by now, you’re in the swing of your fall semester classes (or at least pretending that you are) and can appreciate the changing fall scenes around your school’s campus. You can plan which sweater is funky enough to impress the students in your philosophy class and proudly strut in some killer boots. You have time to stop at Starbucks for their incredibly addicting pumpkin cream cold brew, much to the dismay of your wallet. Perhaps in between essay writing and math problems, you’ve chiseled out time to cultivate the perfect fall playlist. That, of course, includes some carefully selected jazzy tunes and soulful strings (alongside Taylor Swift, Cigarettes After Sex, Cage the Elephant, Simon and Garfunkel, Fleet Foxes, and Still Woozy, naturally). Nights  filled with comfort movies with friends like Halloweentown and Fantastic Mr. Fox. For the braver souls, perhaps you’re overindulging in movies designed to disrupt your sleep for the succeeding month like Halloween or Friday the 13th. Spacing out in lectures now includes thinking about that special someone and all the potential fall dates you could experience. Such as apple picking and a trip to a pumpkin patch — ideas almost cute enough to motivate one to muster up the courage to admit your feelings to them. Almost. 

Upon further consideration of fall, I spot a paradoxical aspect of the very nature of this season. Despite being characterized as the season in which we romanticize trees dying and blend an orange gourd into every food item possible. Fall, for some lovely reason, elicits a sense of a fresh start and simple pleasures. Fall is the personification of that “warm and fuzzy” feeling we’ve all heard about countless times throughout our lives. It has the power to elicit  nostalgia of simpler times where we sat in kindergarten classrooms and haphazardly painted our hands to print turkeys onto paper and compared how many pieces of candy we trick or treated during Halloween with peers. Perhaps it reminds us that change can be beautiful, that it can be painted in a toasty palette, die, and still bloom in a few more months. It’s a reminder that even under layers of turtlenecks and sweaters and cardigans and plaid skirts, we can still shed our shells and grow during this period of warmth and comfort. “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote — and I can inexorably concur.

I want to put on boots and walk in the rain, my only company being my fall Spotify playlist. I want to sink into a pile of leaves until I can’t remember my  name. I want to eat enough candy on Halloween to have a sugar hangover the next day. On Thanksgiving, I want to make the best pumpkin pie I can muster and share it with my family over a wine-elicited conversation filled with giggles and love and uncovered memories. I want to spend too much money on fall drinks this autumn, to think about holding hands in the park with a friend or lover and watch leaves turn from green to yellow to orange to red to brown, to forget I’m in Southern California while wearing a cute sweater when the temperature dips below 70 degrees. Is that too much to ask?