I played "Come from a long way off" while responding. It was nice to get in the same mood you were when you wrote Fair-fronded.

The music captures the rapture of autumnal hues. It’s melancholic and celebratory at the same time. As I have commented in other posts, fall was my favorite season during the 7 years I lived in the states as a grad student. The variety of tones we get from all kinds of trees from intense red to intense yellow and all the oranges in the middle makes one think of a wild decoration for a farewell party.

We say farewell to verdancy, knowing that for 3 or more months after the last leaf falls we’ll see no more colors, but the extremes white and black, with lots of grey in between. Fall's menagerie of colors become some sort of pre-hibernation visual feast to compensate for winter’s chromatic famine.

I think that fall is the season of contemplation. Summer is too hot and fast, winter is too cold and slowly secluding, spring too jolly. Fall dresses nature in attires hard to miss. That state of loftiness you talk about can be achieved only when our senses are challenged beyond the monotony of the other extremes. Fall is the luminal space and even if only briefly, we fall through the cracks of time and space to at least for a while forget about our mundanity and solitude.