A Little Halloween Melancholy

It’s the beginning of November, and I’m sitting on my front porch writing this. My children have co-opted my laptop to play Minecraft, so I’m tapping with thumbs on a little phone screen. I don’t mind. It feels like a good day to take things slow. It’s unseasonably warm out for Minnesota November, although “unseasonable” seems to have less and less meaning these days, thanks to climate change. If you talk about Halloween weather with any middle-aged Minnesotans like me for more than two minutes, they will inevitably bring up the Blizzard of ‘91. I remember trick-or-treating, trudging through knee-high snow, wearing a cowboy costume over my snow pants. Today, we’re past Halloween, but it feels like it could still be late summer. But even with the warm weather, Halloween feels like a moment of transition. There’s a reason for the long tradition of fall festivals at this time of year. We may feel more disconnected from the natural world as modern humans, but there’s still something in…