The streets, lawns, roofs, pavement - everything is matted with leaves, oak and maple for the most part, beech as well. I find it rather intoxicating, not least because San Francisco, where I've lived for nearly 30 years, doesn't have a proper autumn, at least not as an Easterner like myself thinks of it. But also because this time of year here on the Palisades is the one I most associate with childhood: rain, leaves, Halloween pumpkins, galoshes, the smell of the coat closet at the back of class, wet wool and shiny oilskins, the last days of recess outside in the playground, before the onset of cold, the going back of the clocks and, along with that, darkness, the lit rooms and closed curtains of winter.

LRB 11 February 2010 | PDF Download