Fall, I love you.

You are by far the best season of the year. When you think about it, the Fall of each day is when we enjoy our biggest meals, our adult beverages, favorite TV shows and social events. The best part of each day is in the Fall of those 24 hours. Then, like Mother Earth, we sleep through winter towards the spring of another new day.

Yes, we had record rain in October in the great Northwest, but the Fall colors have been spectacular. I started developing shutter finger and couldn’t resist just swinging by Greenlake one day to capture some of that amazing show going on.

Every now and then (and contrary to popular belief) I make an attempt to slow down for even just five minutes and appreciate where I am and what’s going on around me. It was during that brief reflection this week that I realized just how much I am in love with Fall. I guess I always have been.

As a kid, of course, you learn to love Fall. It’s when the new TV shows arrive or, back in the day, when the Sears Christmas catalog showed up in the mail so you could start planning your list for you-know-who! You can’t have Halloween without Fall and what kid doesn’t love wandering around the neighborhood, shaking down neighbors for free candy? I was a kid when the Charlie Brown Halloween special was brand-new and became a much-anticipated annual event. We didn’t have videos and DVRs back then, we lived at the complete mercy of the three networks. As far as sports, I was raised a Dodger fan. We went to three World Series during the 1960s and since the games were often played during the day back then, teachers would wheel in a TV during class so we could all pause the education and watch!

Of course, as an adult, I discovered even more to savor about my favorite season. High school, college and NFL football make every Friday night, Saturday and Sunday special. There’s tailgating and fantasy football.  While we’re talking sports, we’ve got a winning soccer team making its moves through the playoffs and the best of the best in baseball fighting it out in the World Series. There’s also our traditional Fall windstorm, sometimes in October, other years in November. Visually, how do you not love the show put on each year by the leaves turning? Hop in the car and zip over to Leavenworth for a scenic drive through the mountains and you’ll also bump into Oktoberfest. Yes!

Thanksgiving, of course, gets its own paragraph. C’mon, a holiday based around eating? No gifts to buy, getting together with people you like and remembering how lucky we all are–one of the best ideas ever to come out of Washington, D.C.!  Give Honest Abe credit for starting it up, as a positive diversion to a country in the middle of a Civil War.

I also have to give a special shout out to the annual return of Standard Time. Yes, it means enduring endless grumbling about how early it gets dark. But its a small price to pay for an extra hour’s worth of sleep and on the weekend, no less.

Now don’t go letting this get to your head Fall, but you are simply the best. I suppose the only thing that could possibly make you any better is if we moved the elections to August. Please give that idea serious consideration.

Tim Hunter