Every year, when spring slowly begins turning into summer, or when summer starts fading into fall, I feel something shift inside of me.

It happens almost without warning.

Maybe it’s the way the evenings begin to feel different.
Maybe it’s the smell in the air.
Maybe it’s the changing light.

But every single year, those transitions pull me backward in time to my grandparents’ farm.

That place felt more like home to me than anywhere else growing up.

The Summers That Stayed With Me

I spent weeks there during the summers, and every fall we made our way back again. Looking back now, I think those seasons became stitched into me somehow. Even now as an adult, when the seasons begin changing, I feel those same emotions rise back to the surface.

In the summer, I remember sitting on the front porch looking out across the field and the creek that ran along the road. During the day, everything felt alive with sunlight. The trees moved softly in the breeze, birds filled the quiet, and the whole world seemed slower there.

At night, I would sit on that same porch and watch the lightning bugs slowly light up the darkness.

I can still picture it perfectly.

The warm air.
The sound of crickets.
The glow of those tiny lights scattered across the field.

Sometimes I would sneak down to the creek even when I wasn’t supposed to go alone. Something about it always pulled me in. The sound of the water, the plants growing wild along the edge, the birds hidden in the trees overhead.

It felt alive in a way I never knew how to explain.

When Fall Arrived

And then fall would come.

I remember running up toward the horse field and climbing onto the fence so I could pull myself up into the branches of the biggest maple tree there. I would sit high up in that tree looking out over the pasture completely in awe of the leaves.

Everything glowed with color.

The horses would notice me eventually and come galloping across the field toward the tree, almost as if they were wondering what in the world I was doing sitting up there above them.

Those memories feel so deeply tied to the seasons themselves that even now, certain smells instantly transport me back there.

In the summer, it’s honeysuckle.

In the fall, it’s wood burning stoves.

Both grounding me in the same quiet way.

I think that’s why the changing seasons affect me so deeply now. They don’t just mark time passing. They awaken old versions of ourselves. Memories we forgot we were carrying. Feelings attached to places we loved before we even had words for why we loved them.

And maybe that’s why summer and fall still feel the most alive to me.

Because somewhere deep down, part of me is still sitting on that porch watching lightning bugs rise from the field…or tucked high inside that maple tree watching the horses run below.