Meghan O'Keefe

It’s the day after Labor Day, so obviously everyone is starting to write about how they are being bewitched by autumn. 

There’s talk of sweaters and mulled wine, huge fuzzy blankets and apple cider, books that number over 900 pages long and fireplaces that crackle with the noise of real wood being burnt. 

I feel like as much as the rhetoric of spring can be ascribed to the English Pastoral tradition (flowers blooming and gentle rains, sheep baaing in the green fields and hemlines creeping up young women’s thighs, dew dressing every corner of the morning and the pheromones of love nipping at our noses), the imagery of autumn should be locked down with New England.

There isn’t a truer autumn than a New England autumn. 

Everything that makes the autumn so lovely is heightened in New England. Boston is flooded with college kids going back to school. The trees turn a sharper amber and a richer gold. The wind dampens earlier. By October you’re hugging your coat to your chest and wondering how you’ll manage the winter again. Pumpkins almost tile the sidewalks and squash seems to multiply overnight in the produce carts like Tribbles in Star Trek. Halloween is made eerier just by being a mere car ride away from Salem. Thanksgiving is made more accessible by being, again, a mere car ride away from Plymouth. The libraries are overflowing with leather backed tomes waiting to be discovered. The kitchens are steaming with pumpkin breads and boiling ciders. Autumn in New England is simultaneously the platonic ideal of autumn and the platonic ideal of New England.

What I’m saying is as much as I love autumn in New York (or anywhere on the map), I can’t help but feel a yearning to be in Boston at this time of year. I spent seven autumns there and I suppose that should be enough, but it isn’t.