Golden Days
It would seem that the weather in Warsaw keeps a close eye on the calendar. Straight up to the moment of the Fall Equinox, we were still firmly in shorts and a T-shirt weather. The Equinox arrived and just like that, the season turned on it’s heel and here we were in the throws of fall.
Fall is a blustery, wet affair in Warsaw. I wish I had realized that from the beginning. It would have gone a long way to adjusting my expectations. Instead, all I knew about Autumn in Poland was that it is referred to as “The Golden Days”.
That sounded awfully promising.
Our first year here, we eagerly anticipated the arrival of the Golden Days. After September and most of October passed in an unending procession of rain, wind, and gratuitously cold days, we were starting to think we’d been sold a bill of goods. Finally, almost belligerent, we asked what in the world was going on and where these Golden Days we’d been promised were. Our local friend looked confused. She indicated out the rain soaked window and said, “They’re here right now.”
Turns out, I had made some highly inaccurate assumptions. When I heard Golden Days I was envisioning halcyon days ushering out the summer past, welcoming cool crisp days ahead. When Poles say Golden Days they mean, literally, that the Earth turns golden. Where I saw frosty mornings and the first chill breezes they saw harvesting wheat and changing leaves.
I admit, my vision of Autumnal splendor was a bit grandiose. Staring down the prospect of my third Polish Fall I’ve learned a gear deal. I’ve come to see the beauty in even the rainiest of Golden Days. Those wet leaves quivering in the Autumn wind are indeed golden in hue. And every single time we get a clear, crisp day that I envision as supernally Fallish I never take it for granted.
Besides, we have spent too many Octobers in the desert or the tropics to look an Autumn horse in the mouth. So we will do all of the scarf-wearing, fire-staring, autumnal-baking, leaf-admiring that we can fit into these Golden Days.