October in Iowa by Kelsey Leign

Looking out the window, you can see the air changing. The crisp autumn air is blowing through the leaves of the trees, dragging down several leaves to the cool ground. The rain makes the pavement sparkle, with the colored trees reflected in the water. The breeze blowing your hair in your face calls for scarves and sweaters, boots and jeans. You start wearing your hair down to keep your ears warm and to pull your look all together. Your cheeks turn rosy and your eyes water a little from the cool wind, but the smile on your face welcomes the weather with joy.

The nearby farm turns from a fun playground to an apple orchard and pumpkin patch and the weekends bring the haunted barn and corn maze. You pick out your pumpkin for carving, some apples for baking and maybe some decorative gourds for the front steps. The decorations that have been packed away get placed all over your front yard, which you had to rake earlier to get the fallen leaves into the pumpkin colored trash bags. Before you put them in the bag, you had to jump in them a few times, take a few pictures laying in the pile of leaves.

The comfort foods you eat change from ice cream to homemade apple crisp and scotcheroos. The candy corn at the store sits stale while you grab the bags of candy to hand out to the children come the end of the month. Some like to dress up in scary costumes for the children, others like to wear their own favorite character, but very few don’t dress up at all. Not because they don’t believe in it, but simply so they can tell the kids how wonderful their costume is without expecting them to say something about theirs.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are in many women’s hands, while I usually go for a salted caramel mocha because it mixes the fall with what comes after Halloween, Christmas time. The hot chocolate flavor sits on your tongue and you smile warmly, knowing the hot drinks will keep you warm come the freezing weather in a few months. You hold the cup with both hands and pull your shoulders up to your ears in delight with that first sip of what tastes like fall.

After work, you curl up on the couch with a warm blanket and some soup, turning on your favorite spooky time movie. The windows are open and you can smell the wet leaves through the breeze that comes through the window. The fresh apple pie you made is baking in the oven, filling the house with the smell of fall. You listen to the rain hit the leaves outside the window as you fall asleep that night, the natural ambiance so soothing in your ears.
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Fall is the one season that I miss seeing since moving to California. I would take drives out of town to find the biggest forested area and see the orange, yellow, red and purple trees. For me, there wasn’t any point in taking pictures, I just sat and admired the beauty that was there in front of me. There isn’t much of that here in LA, but I make sure to find it somewhere whenever I can. Fall is my favorite season and October is my favorite month in Iowa. Someday I’ll get married in October, keeping the scenery of the fall trees in my wedding pictures for life.