Like a breath of fresh air the autumnal equinox signals the passing of a warm, fruitful season and the arrival of a world of changing colors and cooler air. The days begin to get shorter and the nights longer, and the socioeconomic posture of the world-at-large turns from worker-tender to worker-harvester as the fruits of agro-labor are collected and stored for the coming winter.

In modern times it is a season for changes. Schools have reopened their doors, football is the favored national sport, and merchants are already thinking ahead to the not-too-distant holiday season as fall begins to give way to late December’s winter solstice.

Regardless where you may live or what you may do, the seasons change from summer to fall to winter to spring, only to start over again and again, making our varied and sundry lives little more than a spot on the astronomical map of a timeless universe. Once each quarter we experience a heavenly event known either as a solstice or an equinox, those regular times of year when the orbit and tilted orientation of our planet passes into a new face of elliptical progression forcing the seasons to change on this little blue and green planet we call Earth. And the coming and goings of these seasons does not pass without our notice -- and our long interest.

For many the coming of fall represents a favored time for travel, especially for travelers without school age children. The lines are shorter at attractions, reservations are easier to get at restaurants and lodges, and there's the added benefit of not having to deal with the heat of the peak summer season. Yet, depending on when and where you travel in Texas, there's still plenty of warm days to enjoy the beach, and cool days to enjoy the Hill Country and mountains out West.

And it's a season of special events. From the ending Major League Baseball season to the start of the NFL season and Texas school boy football, there's always a game nearby to watch. It's also a time for plenty of fairs, like the Texas State Fair, East Texas Fair, a number of county Fairs, the Tyler Rose festival, The Rockport Seafair, the Texas Ranaissance Fair, the South Padre Island Bikefest, the Cuero Turkeyfest, Octoberfest celebrations all across the state, and more.

There is also plenty of holiday events and attractions coming just around the corner, and the spectacular autumn drives through the pristine Texas countryside are hard to beat.

While the summer season provides the staple of vacation planning in the state -- the cake -- fall, if anything, is the icing that makes the travel season sweet. Autumn, for whatever reason, seems to be one of the most welcome of season changes in Texas, almost a magical, mystical time of year full of adventure and mystery. Perhaps it is a fresh breath of earth after an often punishing hot summer that makes it feel so special. But for whatever the reason, the fall travel season has arrived and more and more Texans are taking to the long Texas highways to celebrate the autumnal equinox - and beyond.

ANCIENT TIMES
At the dawning of the ages early man knew little about the heavenly progression of the stars and planets. But it didn’t take long to observe there was a regular order to the growing seasons. So great the influence of the seasons that mankind began to plan their lives around them. There was a time for planting and growing and harvest; a time for hunting and gathering, for conception and birth.

It didn’t take long at all for our earliest ancestors to begin to seek  meaning to the celestial movements and the changing seasons. Where they lacked in scientific knowledge they soon learned to explain with spiritual and divine inspiration, and it wasn’t long before the changing seasons took on ominous and often metaphysical interpretation.

But perhaps the most important of all the season changes was the transition from the traditional summer growing season to the season of harvest and the promise of hope for the coming barren winter and eventual survival to spring when once again the world took on a rebirthing of prosperity and the planting of the year’s crop was anxiously placed into the warming soils.

Great celebrations were held and eventually gala festivals and gatherings were staged to honor the fall equinox and traditions were born and customs developed that survive even in the modern world.

Also a favorite subject for fable and later literature, the fall season has been immortalized by masters like Tolkien who gave his favorite hobbits, Bilbo and Frodo, birthdays to coincide with the equinox. In the Yucatan of Mexico the shadow of a serpent would descend down the stairway of a special pyramid each year on the day of the autumnal equinox, an ingenious design of architecture that can still be experienced today.

As for us in a post-NASA world, the fall equinox is nothing more than the changing of seasons. And maybe that’s all there is to it. But have you noticed even today most everyone you pass on the street seems to share an age-old sentiment, “...fall is finally arriving!”

Happy travels!