Scenes from the Elm City at a Human Pace

I first noticed it the other day, enough so to take a picture, but I didn’t really believe myself.

Those right there. Those are leaves on the ground, right? We’re talking, summer-in-full-effect hot outside, but…is that a sign of Autumn?

The sycamores, it would seem, are on to something.

On Thursday, I could only hope for summer’s end. I arrived that the Bradley Street Bike Co-op drenched in a full-body sweat and left to a slight chill in the air after that wondrous rain.

And by Friday morning, I put on a pair of socks and pulled out an afghan for the slight morning breeze coming in my third floor living room windows. My Texas-acclimated bones felt a slight chill.

Part of exploring a new place by bicycle, by the way, is getting to stop and take a picture of the house with the Walkers outside. But I digress.

My other favorite method for exploration of a new place, of course, is on foot. With Friday’s cool weather and cloudy skies, Mabel led me atop West Rock, where we were able to look out and confirm what we thought we might’ve seen from below — those tell-tale sycamore trees, in a band of slightly off-green-yellow-ish.

You probably can’t tell at all from this picture, or from the recent heat index, but it would seem that fall is on the way.

I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, it’s just those thirteen years in a place where Autumn arrives suddenly, with a cold front and a gust of wind sometime in mid-November, knocking all the leaves you saw yesterday into tomorrow. Until that point, it’s just summer.

Here, I remember suddenly, we get a hint of what’s to come.

And by now, you might be thinking, “I thought this was a blog about biking in New Haven…” and, well, it is. This time around, however, it’s about experiencing a place like this at the human pace of foot or bike. It’s about having the time to notice those very first changing trees and leaves. It’s about not living fully encased in cars and air conditioning and feeling that first gust and quick drop in temperature and change in wind direction that arrives with a cold front.

It’s about living somewhere in such a way that you’re in direct contact with it, rather than floating above or honking and shoving your way through.