Outsider on the Inside
Fall is in the air
Sep 15, 2009
My indefatigable neighbor, a 73-year-old retired Marine and Army man, serves as our local forecaster. He regularly consults the almanac and spends a good portion of each day watching cable news and The Weather Channel. We have come to trust his predictions, and last week he told us it would be a long, cold winter.
Photo © 2009 Stan Brewer
By Shoshana Hebshi
You wouldn’t know it by today, but fall is just around the corner. We’ve had some fantastic late summer weather. I feel spoiled, actually. Not too bad considering the rough-and-tumble weather August brought on, portending a long, disturbingly frigid winter.
My indefatigable neighbor, a 73-year-old retired Marine and Army man, serves as our local forecaster. He regularly consults the almanac and spends a good portion of each day watching cable news and The Weather Channel. We have come to trust his predictions, and last week he told us it would be a long, cold winter.
Judging by the mild summer, we didn’t hesitate to groan.
Living the first 30 years of my life in California didn’t help my weather tolerance build. I commend myself for surviving three Iowa winters and summers (though this last one felt like a California summer). But I am in no way ready or excited about the upcoming change in weather patterns.
I am admittedly a wimp. I can’t take the drastic fluctuations in temperature Iowa has to offer, and the ice and wind and snow and sleet that come with winter here are a shock to my fragile system.
See, growing up in San Diego made my body adapt to a constant pleasantness that ranged from around 68 to 80 degrees. Cold was 50. Hot was 90. No humidity. No wind chill. And, if it ever got too hot, we’d go to the beach to cool off. If it ever got too cold, we just put on a sweater. It was an easy life.
Iowans are tough. They endure a lot, and I am amazed by their resilience. When I first moved here three years ago, a friend from San Diego who was living in Chicago advised me to buy a full-length down coat to protect me from the biting winter weather. I obliged, and that coat has been my salvation.
The last two winters when I had to trudge across the Iowa State campus in what seemed to me like a blizzard (in actuality, it was probably just a flurry), that coat protected me from turning into an ice sculpture. Only my face was exposed, and I later learned that wrapping a scarf around the cheeks, chin and nose would protect even more from unwanted frostbite.
I am happy not to have to cross that campus again this winter, but I dread the season nonetheless.
Fall is nice. I love the colors. But now I understand why they call it fall. The leaves. They fall. They must be raked. And we have enough leaves from our two maple trees on our property to fill at least two dozen of those brown compost bags the City of Des Moines sells at the grocery store. That doesn’t include the other leaves blown into our yard from the neighboring trees, which could fill another dozen or so bags.
Fall is a laborious time of year. But it is all part of my hardiness training, to put on those gardening gloves, bundle up and rake the old-fashioned way. With a rake.
I am relishing these last few days of summer. (Autumn officially begins Sept. 22.) I am enjoying not bundling up myself or my kids to go outside and sprint to the car, of course being mindful not to slip in the ice. I am enjoying long days, though I have noticed they have been quite shorter this last week. And I am enjoying my red geraniums that finally decided to put out some robust blooms this week.
Soon, all signs of this mild and glorious summer will have passed on to dead leaves and dormancy. Until then, I will be hanging on every warm gust of wind and every ray of sunshine that graces my skin.
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Shoshana Hebshi is a freelance writer and editor living in Des Moines. She blogs at: http://shebshi.wordpress.com
