After sweating through three clothing changes; the one I walked in, the one I worked in, the one I thought I was lounging in, it’s easy to grasp at straws, but there was something different about the wind yesterday evening.  Thunderstorms had rumbled around and about, none finding us.  With them came a change in the late afternoon wind.   Could there be a herald of better days to come hidden in its breath?

Sometimes we don’t even have fall.  Indian Summer will hang on like an old river cooter battling you for a fish.  Tantalizingly cool mornings turn into blazing hot afternoons with high humidity hanging on until a late October cold snap sends us straight into winter…but there was something whispering in the voice of this northwest breeze.  It was the voice of hope…but don’t get excited quite yet.

My excitement was tempered this morning.  I had to face the fact, it is still late July.  As I met my friend Hawk for our weekly seven miler, I made the mistake of checking my weather app before we began to solve all of the world’s ills.  Ninety-seven percent humidity with a DEW point of seventy-three.  It didn’t matter the temperature was only seventy-three at five thirty in the AM.  Even we South Carolinians living in the foothills of the Blue Ridge know, “it ain’t the heat, it’s the humidity.”  We returned to our cars covered in sweat, our running clothes five pounds heavier than when we began and the world was no better off.  From experience, I remembered, despite the flip of the calendar, there is little difference weather-wise between late July and August…unless it gets worse.

Still, later this same morning, as the heat rose and the humidity decreased to a DEW point of ONLY a tongue in cheek seventy, there was something about the wind.  As I made ever decreasing circles on my lawnmower I noticed it again, the breath of the wind.  Instead of blowing hot and moist as if from the lips of the devil, there was the underlying coolness of Autumn…like a cool lover’s kiss.  There were even a few leaves falling from the trees, caused more, I’m sure, by the strength of the wind than a change in season.  But they were falling.

I hope for an autumn.  Pumpkins and sweet potatoes, coffee and sweat shirts as I sit around a campfire watching the sparks defy gravity in the thermals created by blazing, dry wood.  Cool, crisp morning air causing me to see my breath rather than drowning in the humidity.  Long vees of geese and leaves changing from green to red, yellow and gold.  I hope for autumn like a child hopes for Christmas morning.

Damn, just saw the extended forecast.  Looks like summer will last into November.  We may go straight from flip flops and tees to long johns and polar gear…but then global climate change doesn’t really exist.

Don Miller has written several books that can be purchased or downloaded at   https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

His latest release is a fictional novella entitled OLIVIA which may be downloaded at  https://www.amazon.com/Olivia-Don-Miller-ebook/dp/B0742DF8B2/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Featured picture attributed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn