Homesick

First day of Autumn! Whoo-hoo!. Ok, not acutally, but it's sure starting to feel like it. After the seemingly perpetual cloud-cover blew off (don't worry; the nice people at the BBC assure me it will be back tomorrow), what remained was a clear (by which I mean the English definition of clear: "less than 50% cloud-cover"), cool, crisp, dry, breezy day. It's more than enough to make me yearn for a proper Michigan fall, where the sky (all of it, not just slightly more than 50% of it) is the color of lapis, the leaves on the sugar maples are deep crimson by the trunk, becoming brighter and golder as the branches reach outward, giving the tree the appearance of being on fire, and the drone of the cicadas is almost enough to drown out the jubilant whisper of the dry grasses, but not quite. I have a craving for pumpkins and apples and hot, crunchy, cake donuts, and anything with cinnamon. I want to watch as the world brushes it's teeth, gets its jammies on, and hunkers down for that long, winter's nap. I want to take my aging and decrepit beagle (Daisy) on a jaunt through the trails at Hidden Lake Gardens and see her chase the swans in what will almost certainly be her last autumn. It's her favorite season, too.

To give you all some idea of what I'm talking about (no amount of hyperbole can do a Michigan fall justice), take a look at this photo gallery (no, there's no colour enhancement. it really does look like that):
http://www.lakesuperiorphoto.com/upper%20peninsula%20of%20michigan%20fall%20colors.html

It's funny, I complain about the English weather all the time (as anyone who knows me can attest), but the hardest days are the nice ones. When it's grey and dreary and miserable I know where I am and it fits--it's appropriate. On beautiful days such as this, it's just close enought to being like home to make me really miss it. In other words, the dramatic cultural and climatic differences I can handle. There are no comparisons to my place of origin. But when the difference is subtle, when the day is just home-like enough to bring to the fore of my brain the smell of drying leaves and rotting crabapples, it is (paradoxically) also the most striking. I'm ready to head home, at least for a little while.


note to Sal: thanx for the vote of confidence, but trust me when I say that the only being who would find the sight of the cheeks of my vuluptuous, feminine bum bouncing along on either side of a g-string attractive is the Pillsbury Dough Boy.