The very end of September is when the insane rush of summer hints it is weakening, maybe, just after Bilbo's birthday. You still are wearing thin cotton short sleeves and shorts, outside, after sunset, to go outside.
October....comes in on triple digits and refilling the ice cube tray, and on the last day, leaving with grey skies, rooting around in the kid's room for their long sleeves and boots, as desert-born babies cry about needing mittens in the frigid 60's.
One month ago, October first, the kids clustered into the tiny pockets of shade created by my pathetic shade tarps, torn by the wind. Like bees around the water-spigot in the Phoenix street. Groups of living beings huddled together in the small patches of relief, provided by a little bit of frayed fabric flapping between them and the relentless face of nuclear reactor that lights our world.
Now, November first... the shadows lengthen far beyond the height of the structures that created them. The shadow of the house falls across the entire middle of the backyard, a solid dark coolness, barely skirting the trunks of the citrus trees on the edge. Peter fig struggles to get enough sunlight, his little green figs stuck in stasis, as I scramble to find a new place to plant him. The shed turns the back corner into a deep shadow, damp and cool.
Suddenly, the sun is no longer an enemy, trying to burn you into retreat. It's glimmer peeking over the eastern horizon no longer threatening, but cheering. Rays that touch your skin feel friendly, warming. Long-forgotten socks need to be hunted down and matched, suddenly no longer the unwanted refugees offloaded from laundry basket to laundry basket and ending up stashed behind hampers in the laundry room.
All those ranger boots and cloaks, worn only by proud and overheated 8 yr olds in front of the mirror for 10 minutes, before they were shed in sweating desperation.... are now suddenly practical. A fire seems like a real thing, not an expensive way to toast a few marshamellows as we cosplay "camping" for the kids, before retreating into an air-conditioned building.
So November is Ranger month. When things like long sleeves, cloaks, fire, and boots are suddenly no longer ornaments and props from a different world... but real.
We are the prisoners of the sun, released. Our ship has docked from the deserts of mars, into the realm of Arnor.
We are rangers now, under a grey sky.
