“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.”
– Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Life in the South Carolina lowcountry is not without its tradeoffs. Seasons, for one. We just don’t get those vibrant autumn leaves, we just don’t get that opportunity to pull out the wool coat from the far recesses of the closet.
But hey, we’ve got the shrimp jumping in the tidal creeks and the evocative live oak trees and a chance to dip in the Atlantic Ocean ‘til December so how can I complain?
Since I don’t have the usual visual signs of fall, I have to look for others to know that we’re in autumn.
Here are a few of the telltale signs:
– – The roar of a football game as it blares from the television every Saturday afternoon. (My husband is a longsuffering Carolina Gamecock fan. He’s often standing on the sofa yelling at the screen. I think he believes they can hear him.)
– – Piles of camouflage clothes in the laundry room. It’s deer harvesting season, after all, and my man has to hunt and gather for the family.
– – The feel of an oyster shell in the palm of my hand as I shuck it over a makeshift table (two by fours over trash cans) and rest the delicacy of its meat over a Saltine cracker. Oysters are in season every month that has the letter “R” in it. They are, in my opinion, the best fruit the sea has to offer.
– – Sweaty soccer socks and grass clogged cleats in the children’s rooms. Both of mine love to play every fall, and it’s game after game every Saturday morning.
– – The feel of glitter glue and gorilla tape as it sticks to my hands. My daughter loves to make up her own Halloween costumes each year, and we get really into the process. Here is she is as “Times Square on New Year’s Eve” this year. She’s flanked by her kid brother who went as a paleontologist.
– – The smell of the chiminea in the back yard. It’s not cold yet, but hey, men just like to huddle around the fire. Even if they break a sweat.
– – The taste of pumpkin pie, bread and lattes because I can’t resist anything pumpkin flavored.
– – The feel of a good heavy book in my hands. It’s getting darker earlier each night. Time to curl up with a thick yarn and hunker down by the unlit fireplace.
Winter will come after Christmas and- at long last – it will be nippy enough to bundle up, if but for a few weeks, here in the lowcountry. But just as Hemingway reminds us, spring is always on the heels of winter and it’s the one season we experience in full full force in my neck of the woods from the wisteria to the azaleas to the magnolia blossoms as their sweet syrupy scent perfumes the thick air. Suddenly, the whole region teems with life as vines of every variety attempt to curl their way around rusty bicycle wheels and wrought iron fences and even up under the piazzas and into the house.Using the five senses, what is fall like in your neck of the woods?
For more info. on Beth Webb Hart’s lowcountry set novels click here And feel free to curl up this winter with her new novel, Moon Over Edisto which will hit stores in early February.
