​Delightful morsel
Celebratorily seized
Tasty midday snack

This past Wednesday marked the autumnal equinox for 2021 where I'm situated.  For those reading who might not be familiar with an equinox, it's considered a day in the year when day and night are very near equal.  This usually amounts to the day when a location experiences close to an even split of 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night.  What makes it "autumnal" is that it happens in the season of Autumn (or Fall dependent on how you grew up learning about seasons).  Despite this day not being a great indicator of an area's local climate, per se, it is generally observed as the "first day of autumn."

I have a certain fondness for fall.  There's a warmth the word carries in contrast to the cooler temperatures that the season invites.  Or at least that's how I've typically experienced the concept.  It's the time of the year I'll start swapping out readily accessible shorts for readily accessible flannel pants.  Short sleeves for long sleeves.  Fireplaces become a actively used amenity where people have them, carrying a scent of wood through open chimneys into the air.  And just about every food and drink shop breaks out the cinnamon, a notably "warm-flavored" spice in my book.

Of course, there's no reason these sensations have to be locked to autumn.  Well, maybe you wouldn't opt for long-sleeves in summer, but fireplaces and cinnamon don't have to lose their flair in the winter, yet somehow they do.  I could approach this from a branding cynicism where local shops want to entice you with new seasonal items, and the more they change with the seasons, the more opportunities they have to present you a novel experience for the year.  There's certainly truth in that, but seasons weren't built for the human capitalist machine.  No, that machine merely adopted seasonality.  But did humans adopt them too?  Are seasons an invention or a discovery of humanity?

Let's dive in!

A world of secrets
The feathered realm whispers, they
Keep away from you

​Sun-dappled feathers
Patterns burn equally bright
Perched its ashen wings

Winding mountain trail
Descend over the peaks of
The sky's horizon