Summer is over at the end of this week and I am not looking forward to the season’s change. I love spring, because it signals five months of good weather. Autumn, on the other hand, reminds me that winter is just around the corner, and I cannot find anything good to say about the coming weeks of cold weather.

I’m not saying there is no beauty in the year’s third season, but rather, that it is fleeting. The leaves going from green to various shades of red and yellow are wonderful, but by the end of this month, most of the trees are going to be bare and that depresses me every year. I detest cold weather with a passion. If I could afford it (and get my wife to agree, which is a non-starter), I would move back to Hawaii. One of her pet peeves about living on the big island was what she called the monotony of the weather. To her, every day was a carbon copy of the one before.

To me, the unending sameness was one of the best features, but she missed the assortment that life in Canada brings. Of course, she is not a fan of winter’s cold or summer’s heat, but I have learned not to point that out. My birthday is two days before the end of summer and as I grow older, I can appreciate what my mother endured carrying me through the warmest months of the year.

The weather doesn’t magically turn cold on September 22. In fact, warm weather can continue well into November. My complaint, as infantile as it may be, is that I know it won’t last forever. Sooner or later, and always too soon, in my opinion, the weather will dip below freezing and stay there. The days are getting shorter and, after the autumnal equinox, there is more darkness than light, a truly depressing thought.

Okay, I’m done complaining. It’s time to celebrate the beauty of the season. The changing colors of the leaves are truly stunning, as you can see from the picture above. This is Medicine Hat, Alberta, where I live. The city sits in a valley, bordered on either side by the bluffs of the South Saskatchewan river. It is a beautiful city, with walking paths throughout, that I follow almost every morning with my exuberant border collie, Haley. I spend that time marveling at the gorgeous scenery we have to explore. The people we meet are friendly and return spoken greetings with their own as we pass.

I am grateful to live in this city, which enjoys the warmest winters of any community in the entire province. Calgary, three hours west, gets their chinooks, where the temperature can rise 20+ degrees Celsius in less than eight hours, but they also get the winds that feed the warmth. Medicine Hat gets the treat of the nice weather, but usually without the gale force winds. The days here are consistently warmer than Calgary, a fact I enjoy reminding my brother, Jann, of at every opportunity.

So, with the arrival of fall, I’ll go back to my tried and true habits of enjoying the good weather whenever I can and griping each time the temperature drops below freezing. And why, you might ask? Because I know that it won’t be long before I’m looking at something like this:

Enjoy the season.