I have nothing against the sun. I don’t begrudge anyone their beach, their pool, or their week under a cabana doing absolutely nothing. If it makes you happy, I’m happy for you. It makes me miserable.
My problem with the sun is that there’s no escaping it. If you’re cold, you put on a sweater. If I’m hot and take the equivalent measure in the other direction, somebody calls the police, and by dinner I’m trending on Nextdoor as the first clear photo ever taken of a pale, mostly hairless Sasquatch. Fall is the only season that lets me dress my way into being comfortable, and I’ve noticed I’m a much nicer person when I’m comfortable.
Which makes Los Angeles an odd place for me to live. One day every year, something in me switches over to fall, whatever the weather is doing. I’ll be stuck in traffic on a 90-degree day and find myself in the Starbucks drive-thru ordering a pumpkin spice latte, like a slightly more evolved sockeye salmon swimming upstream. I don’t remember deciding to. Starbucks starts pumping the stuff into the atmosphere every August like a corporate chemtrail, and I’m still not sure if I’m meant to drink it or breathe it. In Los Angeles, the only other sign of fall is a pumpkin patch that pops up in a strip-mall parking lot.
At some point, a man starts buying his clothes at Costco. I’ve reached that point, and for me the holy grail is the Costco shacket. Every fall they show up in a massive pile in the middle of the store, and nothing says the season has arrived quite like it.
My first few years in Los Angeles, I’d buy one, wear it out into the heat, and end up hot as hell, with my mind insisting on the shacket and my body telling my mind exactly where it could put it. These days I’ve learned that the only place in Los Angeles I can comfortably wear a shacket is Costco’s refrigerated produce room. So if you’re ever at Costco in LA, you might find me in there doing laps, happily wearing a borrowed Costco shacket.
So every fall, I’m a salmon with no river. The instinct shows up right on schedule, and all Los Angeles can offer it is a latte, a pumpkin patch and a shacket I can only wear in the produce room. What it actually wants is the fall I grew up with in New York State and lived through in Vermont, where the leaves turn and the weather changes. I’ve loved that fall my whole life, and I still can’t fully explain why.
So here’s my best attempt.
Fall makes sense of things
Most of the year, jazz just sounds like noise to me. In September, Kenny G is elevator music I can’t escape. By October, I’ve curated my own Kenny G playlist on Apple Music and I’m deep in his genius.
I think that’s what fall does for me. The rest of the year, I’m a little out of step, the only one in the room who doesn’t get the song. Then fall comes, and the world finally plays something I understand.
A grey sky has no agenda
Summer comes with expectations. It wants you out. It wants you doing things, and it wants photos to prove you did them. A sunny day you spend reading in a café feels a little like a day you wasted.
A grey sky doesn’t ask for any of that. Give me rain, cold and low cloud, and I want to walk with no particular destination, read, write and think. It’s when I’m at my most creative, and frankly my most cheerful, which surprises people who assume grey weather is something you endure.
The place I feel it most is a tiny café in Stockbridge, in Edinburgh, on a wet November morning, with a cappuccino going cold because I got distracted watching the street. If I ever write a novel, it’ll start there. The weather gives me permission to sit for an hour, and the city is right outside when I’m ready to walk. For an introvert, it isn’t a season. It’s a reprieve.
Just after peak
Peak color is popular for a good reason. When the leaves turn red and gold, it’s one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever see, and I understand why people plan their year around it. It also means everyone else is there too, and the inns are booked months ahead.
My spot is just after peak. The color is starting to fade, most people have moved on, and I get fall a little more to myself.
Edinburgh in November is a good example. Most of the leaves have come down, the Christmas market hasn’t gone up yet, and for a few weeks the city goes back to the people who live there. It’s cold, it’s grey, it’s probably raining, and there’s room on the pavement. It’s still fall. It’s just fall without the audience.
What the salmon knows
For years I treated my fall instinct as a quirk, something to manage with a latte and a borrowed shacket. I’ve come to think it’s information. It’s the part of me that knows where I feel most like myself, and every September it tries to tell me.
That’s the question I’d ask anyone planning a trip. Not where’s popular, or when the guidebook says to go, but when and where you feel most like yourself. For plenty of people that’s a beach in July, and they should go. For me it’s a grey morning just after peak, with fall mostly to myself.
Find your river. And if it’s a cold one, bring a sweater. For once, nobody will call the police.
I’m a travel advisor in Los Angeles, where I own far more sweaters than the weather has ever asked for. If you’re a grey-sky person who wants help finding your own quiet stretch, tell me about your trip here.