Yesterday, on my way to New Beginnings, I stopped to pick up a bright red leaf off the sidewalk. I think it's a maple. We do have maple trees here in Seattle. But oh, not like where I grew up. And not, dammit like those glorious colors that Ken Burns recently offered in his new series on the national parks in the US. How long did they have to wait, Stu and I wondered, for some of those amazing photos? I don't care. I'm glad they did. While the Burns series suggested that the parks were "America's best idea" I have to disagree. They were and are a damn good one but best? Nah. But we're not going political here today.

The colors of autumn are one of the things that I miss from New England. Years ago, my dad, an avid and hugely talented amateur photographer, took some photos (real film, no digital back then) of those vivid red leaves. Scarlet? Vermillion? Have you ever noticed how many words there are for "red"? It's great, isn't it? (okay okay I am sure they exist for every color. I'm into red at the moment, okay?) (picky) Crimson? He wanted me to see them. They were particularly stunning that year and just a red leaf against the plain white background was enough to make me miss "home" even though by then I'd been away from New England and Connecticut for a long time.

To make up for it, however, a few months later, a new batch of photos arrived, documenting the most amazing, momentous ice storm to hit the area. Everything was coated in the clearest casing of ice. i still remember (probably still have, I hope) photos of a branch with bright red berries on it, encased in what might have been at least a half-inch of ice. How did it Mi>do that, i wondered. But more to the point, thanks Dad, because there i was not missing Connecticut for a second. it was the dead of winter and that meant in Berkeley it was sweater weather and yeah, i guess we put on the heat for a bit (in a three bedroom house where "the heat" was pretty laughable. We had a register in the living room floor. That was it. The house, you could see, had been remodeled and added to over the years, but there were no other heat registers, no radiators, nuttin'.

I never could get anyone, even at the Co-op, to understand that apple juice and apple cider are ,i>not the same. I live now in a major apple-growing state and buying "real" cider from Woodring Orchards is not a challenge. And that's the other thing that I missed. when I lived in California, they simply didn't get it. Autumn there, as I recall, seemed to be made primarily for Halloween. I still remember the "oh so Berkeley" conversation in the supermarket about our guilt at buying candy for the little trick-or treaters. Candy, you know, it's so bad> for kids but well, gosh, it is Halloween and they expect it and well it would be wrong to disappoint them and well, i don't exactly get a lot of trick-or treaters at my house so, oh the hell with it, I'm getting what I like and that's that. Oh, and i'll buy this package of little boxes of raisins. Guilt assuaged. And now I had a bag of peanut butter cups. Yum, yum. Screw healthy.

And I learned that yes, you can cook a jack-o-lantern. One year, post-Halloween I took our pumpkin, the one we had the candle in, checked for wax, cut it into big chunks and baked the chunks. when they came out tender, I followed the recipe in the Moosewood Cookbook and made a very respectable pie. So there. Recycling and guilt assuaged. I'm not a big pumpkin pie fan, but at the time, there were fewer vehicles for that combination of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Yummmmm.

So one leaf came home with me and with it, a truckload of memories from yes, jumping in piles of leaves as a kid, the family driving up Avon Mountain (mountain, heh) to the cider mill, and more recently as an adult, going with friends out to the "countryside" outside Boston and Arlington to pick apples and on the way home bumping into the "squash for sale" guy with a truck who had more kinds of winter squash that we'd ever seen. And loading up. then finding the home with the raspberries and the bench with little bags and a cash box. And picking raspberries and paying on the honor system. Wow.

And beautiful though they are and were, I think most winter squashes taste alike but they do provide, I am happy to note, another fine vehicle for the flavors of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger (ok, and butter and brown sugar and maybe a touch of maple syrup). But we had fun cooking and eating whatever they were. And you gotta admit the colors go so well with the season. The oranges and reds of the squash and the reds and golds of the apples were great complements to Autumn.

So, my compliments to the season. I miss you some but without being Wiccan or Pagan, I don't exactly celebrate the Equinox as it deserves. Our Autumn ritual seems to involve changing to the warmer sheets and hauling out the warmer blanket to be named later. Finding those gloves. Putting away the short sleeved tops and replacing them with those LL Bean cotton sweaters. And thinking about reds and golds, oranges and amber and red and red.

Happy Fall everyone. And apologies and honor to Jules Feiffer whose wonderful dancer character brought us the seasonal dances that inspired the subject line here.