The oppressive summer heat broke mercifully last Tuesday, yielding to the cool fall air we̢۪ve been waiting for since May.

Weather. Weather is one of the precious reminders that, despite talk of humans “saving the planetâ€Â and all the gawking over modern technology, we are still small on the earth. Humans are no more able to change the seasons now than we were when the proverbial caveman walked the earth. It’s a humbling token of our mortality.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (or maybe it was Somerset Maugham) once wrote a tremendous passage about the emotions associated with changing seasons. Here̢۪s my take.

The air doesn̢۪t just feel cooler, it feels different. It has a fragile quality that gives me a fuzzy feeling, the collective buzz of a thousand memories and a strange excitement and hope for the future. I may sound corny, and I̢۪m certainly no Fitzgerald (or was it Maugham?) but I̢۪d say there̢۪s a little magic to it.

The school year, the new beginning, always starts in fall, and it̢۪s no coincidence that our nation̢۪s most celebrated sport begins around the same time that fall does, and ends not long after.

Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the most interesting and, in my opinion, best holidays of the year happen during this season. On the fourth of July everyone gets wasted and blows things up. Valentine̢۪s Day we awkwardly fake affection and nervously spend money. Not now.

Now is when we show our creativity by wearing strange outfits, when we take a whole day off to eat and be grateful for what we have, and when we sing songs and buy gifts for our loved ones to celebrate the birth of hope itself.

Humans created all these things, and decided to place them in autumn. They are manifestations of what it does to us.

As a long-time high school and college marching band member, me and fall have a special relationship. The smell of diesel fuel, of all things, takes me back to road football games and marching competitions. I̢۪ve met a slew of new people each fall since my Freshman year of high school, and my relationship (romantic or otherwise) to them was built on these long bus trips and a shared desire to win in football, at the band competitions, and yes, with the opposite sex.

I̢۪ve never seen the football team from any of my three schools win a championship. My high school band never did too well at those competitions. And here, at the ripe old age of 24, I still find myself single.

And yet I start getting excited about fall sometime in January. This is when everything is new again, and anything can happen.

Plain ol̢۪ humans will never recreate or even alter the enchantment and mystery that come with autumn. I̢۪d hate to see what we̢۪d do with it if we could. It̢۪s here now, and that̢۪s good enough for me.