Fall has fallen....

So it is finally really and truly fall, by all possible measures. We’re past the equinox (official start of fall), past October 1 (unofficial start of fall, since September is often more summery than fall), and now past October 12, the final unofficial start of fall, and a big national holiday in Spain (yes, I know this holiday is politically incorrect in the USA).

In a normal year, sometime in October I do a favorite day hike to see what little fall color we have near Madrid: a pretty loop from El Escorial to see chestnut trees, a spectacular linden tree and a kind of maple that turns dark instead of bright red. In a good normal year, I’d be hiking part of the month, probably somewhere on the Camino (Road of St. James), but maybe in Catalunya or Andalucia.

But this isn’t a normal year. For now we’re all stuck in Madrid, thanks to new virus restrictions, not as bad as spring but keeping us in the city. Thank goodness for the Casa de Campo park, which was packed all three days of last weekend. Lucky for the locals, it’s big enough to absorb a lot of people – it’s about 1,722.7 hectares / 4,257 acres /6.65 square miles, about five times the size of New York's Central Park or twice the size of Paris' Bois de Boulogne. The photo at the top is part of my usual loop walk, with a kind of ash tree starting to change colors.

And since we’re in fall, here’s some true trivia about the season.

Fall as a season is a newer concept than summer or winter; spring as a season is a little older than fall but not by much. What’s curious about this season is that in English it has two names, autumn more frequent in British English and fall in American English. My original intuition about the names was only partly correct: fall was originally fall of the leaf, later shortened to just fall, more or less my guess. For “autumn” my guess was that it must be from Latin because the main Romance languages all have similar words (automne in French, otoño in Spanish, autunno in Italian, outono in Portuguese). But that’s not quite right: since the season wasn’t really considered a separate season until the 16th century the word probably comes through old French, and while the root is Latin “autumnus” the origin of the Latin word isn’t clear (maybe Etruscan!), nor is it clear why the French chose that word for fall instead of creating a new word. As to the fall / autumn word difference, it was part of the spelling reform in the American colonies, as a way to differentiate the new country from England, along with other changes like colour to color, practise to practice, centre to center.

Winter storm names: The British Weather Service is naming Atlantic storms, just like what’s done in the Americas for the hurricane season, though generally with a lot fewer storms: the September – August 2019-2020 season only got as far as Francis in August 2020. Why name a storm? Weather crews have discovered that giving a storm a name makes it more real to people, thus making it easier to post information for citizens to prepare or take shelter. Alex was the first European storm of the season in early October, and it was a doozy even in Spain, though much worse in France. See the storm names for this year here; just note that “Aiden” was changed to “Alex” when it became clear the storm would hit France more than Britain. Web https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/warnings-and-advice/uk-storm-centre/index

Fall month names: have you ever noticed that the months September to December are incorrect numerically? September is seven, but it’s the ninth month of the year, and so on up to and including December, which is not the tenth but the twelfth month of the year. The reason for that goes back to the Romans: their calendar used to start on March first, and only had ten months, which solves the wrong month names for the last four months of the year, but makes my ponder the big blank between the end of December and March 1; didn’t anything happen in that time of year that needed explanation or dating? Anyway, the initial changes to the Roman calendar happened in 153BC, at that time the only change was starting the civil (read bureaucratic) year in the middle of winter, at the start of what would eventually become January. The beginning of the civil year was when the Roman consuls and army generals were named, and perhaps one reason for naming them in winter instead of spring helped get the armies organized and in place for the start of battle season. Spanish lore claims that was specifically to help the Romans in their ongoing conflict with a tiny hilltop village called Numantia (just north of Soria city) that refused to surrender to the far superior forces of Rome. That’s a great theory but the dates don’t quite work out for Numantia to be the only reason for the change. (Numantia is a fabulous story for another time.)

When talking about fall in Madrid we have to be fast. It’s a really short season, to the point that a weather saying says Madrid has “nine months of winter and three months of hell” – it sounds better in Spanish (nueve meses de invierno y tres de infierno). Which of course means no spring and no fall, usually true though this year might be different: except for a few really nasty Alex storm days right at the beginning of October our weather has been wonderful, and forecast for the rest of the week looks equally nice. That makes me happy - as an Iowan, I really miss having a real fall. And specifically this year some good October weather will hopefully let my Brussel sprouts plants take hold – after successfully harvests of arugula and green peppers I’m a convert to balcony gardening. At least this year, when immobilized in Mad City.

Stay well, y’all! Enjoy your leaf-fall or autumn, whichever you prefer.