feels like fall...

this weekend, it began to feel like fall. now i've always thought, because of the automatic vacation it brings, that summer was my favorite season, but this year the arrival of fall has me feeling faaaaaantastic! it seems like the autumn breezes and the slight nip in the air, the leaves beginning to turn and the smell are all turning me nostalgic. reminding me of a time (not tooooo long ago) that was easy.

fall brings with it football season, and with football comes the more important marching band competition season. hearing west johnston practice at night and seeing jordan at mcdonald's day really have me anticipating this saturday's competition at panther creek. there is something quite magical about marching band, that for 11 or so minutes you can be totally lost in a sea of people, music, color and dancing, with drums beating through you and adrenaline coursing through your veins. a good show makes it impossible to avert your eyes and lures the audience, like the pied piper, into another world. i don't care if it makes me a geek, i love it.

fall also brings memories of horseback riding... well i guess every season brings those memories, but of horses beginning to pick up the pace after the heat of summer has stopped dragging them down. of college dressage competitions at st. andrews and averitt, virginia intermont and va tech, and dabbling in the world of hunters, of cleaning stalls during the time when you weren't sure if you had to wear shorts or bang ice out of water buckets. riding is like nothing else in the world... and i miss it terribly.

and all of this brings me to the last thing that is inevitably linked to the fall - the mountains. i was born and raised in durham, but i have always been a country girl at heart. i think it comes from my daddy's savannah heritage or something, but especially after going to app and then living in valle crucis, the fall becons me to those hazy blue ridge peaks. to football games in the FREEZING cold, to walking across campus and battling the wind, to late nights with friends, to driving on the parkway, and to hiking to beautiful views you can't get to any other way.

ahh fall! thank goodness for track-out in just 4 days so i can go enjoy it for two weeks!

[and no, i didn't take the really awesome picture at the top of the page.]