Autumn: A magical time-travel machine

I've lived in the mid-Atlantic region my whole life, so the seasons are nothing new. But that doesn't make autumn any less amazing.

I like to think of the seasons as a sort of travel experience, except instead of jetting off to gawk at a new landscape of mountain vistas or canyon cliffs, we get to travel in time. The landscape changes, while our feet stay planted. Alchemy, leaf by leaf.

Charlottesville, Virginia, is the perfect vantage point to see the transformation unfold. The air is cooler, crisper. My footsteps on the leaf-strewn sidewalk crackle. The birds are going mad with twittering, as if they need to tell every living organism that something special is happening.

It's not full-blown autumn yet, as you can tell from the greenery above. But the season is ripening. Time is passing. We might forget that sometimes as humans, but the trees always know.