By Amanda Knox

There’s the dutiful packing away of white pants and sundresses. The last escape to the lake to shiver around the last campfire, even as the damp creeps. Traditions from across the globe ask that we tend the graves of our dead. In Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, ‘The Man’ is burned as a sacrifice. In Greek myth, Persephone, goddess of vegetation, returns to the underworld to be with her husband, Hades, god of the Dead. The sun enters Libra, the constellation of the weighing scales, marking the time when the nights grow as long as the days, before overtaking them. Put this way, and for those afflicted by SAD (seasonal affect disorder), the end of summer can feel a bit like the End, even when it’s really more like a waltz away from lazy afternoon BBQs toward soggy socks and rain slickers.  

The entrance into autumn is also often treated as a beginning. Our Jewish friends and neighbors celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the new year. Children, their parents in tow, shop for clothes and supplies for the new school year. No longer in school myself, I cannot help but recall the inexorable marching of my visceral clock towards September heralding the coming of a new body, a new spirit, and new possibilities.

There’s the renewed timeliness. The lax, day-by-day spirit of summer gives way to the scheduled hourly discipline of autumn. There’s a sudden acceleration of time; Back-To-School decorations give way to Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, a month or more before their time. Pumpkin-spice lattes anticipate peppermint mochas. Bright sparks like these add color and life to days which, although we know they are shorter, often seem longer.

Anticipation characterizes the act of saying goodbye to summer. We have just celebrated our survival of winter by enjoying the summer, and in so doing, we have fattened and readied ourselves for another turn at survival. Instead of gathering our nuts and lining our dens with pine needles, we work. Perhaps we overwork. Soon we will wake up in darkness and emerge from work in darkness. We will duck our faces from the rain, the sleet, the cold, and gather about us our scarves, hats, sweaters, and coats like armour.

It feels very real, and this is why I love this time of year. It was there all along, but I am made aware of the physical world imposing itself again. I am asked to turn my attention toward work, but also toward gratitude and giving. Out from the depths of my closet come my beloved, clunky boots and cute, woolen hats. Shaving my legs, not much of a priority before, becomes even less so.

Even so, usually the oncoming autumn is able to sneak up on me. I put off the last trip to the lake until it’s too late. I go through a period of being unable to dress myself appropriately for the weather, because I’ve forgotten how to layer. Meanwhile, I’m unreasonably lethargic because my body doesn’t know how to account for the extending twilight. I don’t have a tradition for marking the End, or the Beginning, whichever way you see it.

Not this year. This year I broke my traditionless tradition and bid summer farewell from the top of Smith Tower.

Smith Tower is the cream-colored office building that peaks out over Pioneer Square. At thirty-eight stories, it is the oldest skyscraper in Seattle and was the tallest building on the West Coast until the Space Needle overtook it in 1962. The tower is topped with a pyramid, and at the pyramid’s point is a small, blue globe of glass and then, a flag pole. This past Tuesday following 9/11, Cory Jackson, chief engineer at Smith Tower, had to reposition the American flag from half-mast to full, and he needed an assistant to double-check the locks on his climbing harness. The invitation was extended to me.

A sturdy, black, wrought-iron, spiral staircase rises from the center of the interior of the point of the tower. The beautiful sitting room, crowned with a blue, Chihuly chandelier, funnels into a concrete cylinder. A wrought-iron ladder rises straight up through a hole in the cap of concrete cylinder so small you had to superman your way through, one arm raised above your head, the other tucked against your body. The globe blossoms on the other end of this hole, complete with a carpeted sitting platform and embroidered pillows.

The globe is all-window, and I was privileged to a rare 360 degree perspective of Seattle from above. Accustomed as I was to heights from rock climbing, I still shuddered as Cory wrapped the fabric bands of the harness around his limbs and opened a panel of the globe from the inside. Cool, new autumn air rushed inside and drew my breath. I felt a rush of weight from the gravity of such height.

Once I had checked his locks, Cory was quick to rise halfway out into the open air above the globe and adjust the flag. In the meantime, I poked my head out and experienced the release of fear and exhilaration. I knew I would have to go back down to real life very soon, but for those few minutes I was suspended. I thought about the passage of time, the oncoming autumn. I thought of how all the green still around me would soon turn color and fall, how the light would lessen. I felt grateful to get a chance to take it all in again, all at once, before it was gone.

I thought, “Goodbye, Summer. Thanks for all the fun.”