COLUMN: Falling For Fall

Fall has arrived in Southwest Montana and I must say it is easily my favorite season the year.

I love to leave the house for work on a crisp morning and see the temperature slowly rise to a comfortable high later in the day.

To me there is just something special about the colors of fall and it also means the start of football season which also gets me fairly excited unless I have to try and take pictures again in a driving rain storm which was a nightmare. I still don't think my camera is dry. Hopefully the fall will stick around a few weeks and winter will not arrive early. It's kind of like visiting a big city and returning home to realize it feels a lot better to take a deep breath of the fresh air. I can leave the house in a sweatshirt and keep it on all day without being too hot or too cold.

As much as I enjoy the fall it is followed by winter which I have to say is my least favorite season of the four.

I don't think this was always the case, but the older I get the more I cannot stand the winter.

I know a lot of people really enjoy getting outside for activities in the winter, but this is not my cup of tea.

I went skiing once when I was probably around five or six years old. I had watched the Americans win several medals at the Olympics and thought it would be easy to glide down the hill and maybe someday stand on the podium. Boy, was I wrong. I spent 95 perfect of the day square on my bottom. It was awful and I still hurt thinking about it. That was the last day I went skiing and I'm completely okay with that.

When it is cold outside the last thing I want to do is remain out in it any longer than I have to. It may also have to do with the fact I'm a klutz and fell three times in the same week last year. I feel the same way about mowing the lawn as I do about shoveling snow. It is certainly not bad exercise but after a while it really gets old and I prefer it when somebody else does it on those days where the temperature is frigid or nearing 100 degrees.

Probably the thing that has soured me most on the winter is the way people drive. I really wouldn't mind the snow and ice that much if people would just slow down, but that is never going to happen no matter how much I want it to. Even if I wanted to do something I would have to drive to get there and that would take all the fun right out of it. I'll never understand why people can't understand that driving too fast on bad roads causes a lot of accidents, but they seem to care less and that's a shame.

At least in the winter the house is always a comfortable temperature, or at least it should be. I once had a house where the furnace was temperamental, and it was always a real treat to wake up in the morning to find it had not kicked on during the night and it was a solid 39 degrees in the house.

I enjoy spring when it finally arrives and the colors start to change. Often times there is quite a bit of moisture and that is when things really start to get green. My biggest complaint about spring is that it never seems to arrive in time. I'd probably be happy with a full year of spring and fall but I don't get much control over those type of things.

The summer in Montana never gets to the point of somewhere like Las Vegas, but there are certainly days where it gets a little bit too warm. Other than a few days where my house and office feel like a sauna, I'd have to say I prefer the summer over the winter, but it still doesn't come close to the magic of the fall.

I'm going to enjoy the next few weeks of fall in Montana with plenty of football on the couch and in person. I'm ok with either one.