The Coming Fall

Every season shifts. Every administration settles. The question is: into what?

Photo by Alisa Anton on Unsplash

Fall doesn’t arrive politely. It barges in with a chill that cuts the last haze of summer, with buses rumbling at dawn and football banners snapping in the wind. You can hear it in the hurried footsteps of schoolchildren, in the early darkness, in the nation’s seasonal return to tailgates and Sunday scaries.

I love the fall, partly because I dread the winter. Autumn cushions the blow with harvest tables, impossible colors in the trees, and the first invitations to reflect on the year already burning down behind us. Shorts give way to sweaters, hikes to hearths. One of my high school teachers adored winter precisely for that reason: the solitude it offered, the permission to hole up with long books and longer thoughts. Fall is the prologue to that inward turn.

But the season isn’t just meteorological. Washington has its own fall cycle, and it’s just as bracing. As October approaches, the government lurches into a new fiscal year. Budgets, even when hastily drawn or scandal-smudged, are the actual signature of power. And while this administration has accelerated its mark, thanks to a cascade of allegedly illegal maneuvers that shoved personnel and priorities into place faster than usual, the rhythm still feels familiar. By fall, every presidency starts to feel like it belongs to its new stewards, not the ghosts who came before.