How I Learned to Hate Autumn

I used to love the autumn.

For a good part of my adult life, I lived in New York City. Although New York has experienced hotter summers in recent years, the reality is that New York summers have always been unpleasant. Garbage strikes and subways cars without air conditioning made them worse, but they were never great. So I always looked forward to the fall and there were very few things I liked more than walking the streets of Greenwich Village, where we lived, on a crisp October night. But it wasn’t just that the weather was cooler. It was the overall feel of autumn and the energy that seemed to return to the city after three months of the city being “gone” in some bizarre way. Labor Day came, and my spirits used to pick up in an almost amazing way.

I no longer look forward to the autumn. In fact, I dread it.

Some years ago, we moved out of the city because we thought it was time to have a life that did not impose the opportunity costs that come with just about everything that you do in New York. Yes, it’s a great city. No argument there. But day to day life can grind you down unless you have domestic staff who do all of the things that normal people have to do. In any event, we decided that we wanted more space and what, for us, was a better quality of life.

So we found five glorious acres in an area that was set in the midst of some of the most beautiful countryside we had ever seen. We are surrounded by magnificent wildlife. We see birds regularly in our garden that I had never seen before except in books. We have all sorts animal neighbors in addition to the birds: ground hogs, rabbits, foxes, and deer.

Let me emphasize that although we live in area surrounded by beautiful countryside, we do not live in a rural area. On the contrary, we live in an area that is something between a suburban development and the country. We have neighbors and, although we all have wells and septic tanks, we are only minutes away from a shopping center — three actually.

So we thought we had found the best of both worlds. And I was really looking forward to autumn in a place where we had more trees on our property than I had seen in the whole of New York outside of Central Park. The show of colors was breathtaking.