After months of high humidity, warm mornings and sultry afternoons, cooler weather has returned. At night temperatures are in the low 40s, and though sun drives us into splashy bright afternoons, the bones don’t completely recover from the morning lows. 

The first cold is always a shock: the way the air enters the nostrils, the need to feel warm merino wool against the skin, the return of layers, the chapping of lips and the drying of hands. 

You know the cold is out there in the summer, up there at the poles, or circulating in another hemisphere. And you feel whenever you step into a super-chilled supermarket. But you can’t step out of today’s cold. 

This is not the end of the warmth and humidity (it can’t be!) but a taste of what’s to come. And it makes me shiver, just thinking about it.