Trares
Even I couldn’t resist autumn’s siren song.
Usually, in early September, I’m clinging to the last remnants of summertime. Any excuse to put on shorts and lounge in the sun needs to be embraced; all too soon, we’ll all be buried under heavy winter coats, shivering underneath gray skies.
So I’m not in any mood for pumpkin spice or apple cider until I absolutely have to be.
But last weekend offered something of a conundrum. After a sweltering week when temperatures climbed into the high 90s, the weather forecast called for a cool down Saturday and Sunday. Temperatures in the mid-60s with a nice breeze? It was very definition of sweater weather.
Anthony and my wife couldn’t have been happier. If it were up to them, they’d be putting up spooky decorations and arranging pumpkins on the front porch in mid-August. I’m the autumn curmudgeon — a fall-mudgeon, if you will — in the family.
Still, their enthusiasm was infectious, so I played along. Searching for something to do, I found a caramel apple festival at a nearby apple orchard. Even before my suggestion was fully out of my mouth, Anthony was jumping up and down in excitement. He had been dying to pick his own apples off the trees, and this was the perfect opportunity to do that.
Saturday morning arrived with a nip in the air. We all dressed up in long pants, sweatshirts and our best cool-weather finery for a trip to the orchard. When we arrived, we found what seemed like a majority of the Indianapolis area had the same idea.
People milled about, happy for a break in the heat and a chance to make believe it was mid-October. Lines snaked around for a chance to get apple cider slushies or pumpkin cream cheese muffins. They posed for Instagram-worthy photos next to scarecrows and sunflowers, or biting into fresh cinnamon doughnuts.
We joined them whole-heartedly. First we wandered through the apple orchard, filling up our bag with bright red Jonathan and Honeycrisp apples. Anthony zoomed down a farm slide and climbed to the top of a hay bale mountain.
Feeling adventurous, we made our way through the corn maze — which proved more intense than we anticipated. For a while, we figured we just lived in the maze now.
We took a hayride around the orchard and picked up a package of doughnuts to take home from the farm store.
By the end of the afternoon, we were tired but immensely happy. It was the kind of memory that sticks with you for a long time: a chance to spend time doing something unexpected that we all enjoyed together.
Even better — temperatures are back up into the 80s again this week. Summer’s not quite done with us yet.
Ryan Trares is a senior reporter and columnist for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
