I’ve never really minded fall. It always meant the slow decay of summer, but it was ok in the sense that it’s also a time when you jumped back into the routine of school, friends, the holidays, etc. It was natural to detest its coming because it was the end of tree forts, flip flops, and daylight savings. This time however, I hated fall.

I was mad that summer was ending, because it hadn’t gone the way it was supposed to be. Instead of camping or having water fights outside, we’d all forced ourselves to grease the wheels of society by getting insignificant jobs. We weren’t supposed to be tired, working and never have the time or effort to see each other. But that’s the way it had been, and it scared me. How were we supposed to make it through our last year with that attitude? Which was just another reason I hated this autumn – it felt like it was my last one. Here, anyway…when your dad graduated from Stanford, he’s not going to let you go to a college in a forgotten state like ours. It’s not that I didn’t want to move on, it’s just that I didn’t want to pack up and leave….everything, all at once – and everyone.

I first saw skyline drive when it felt like everything in my life was falling apart. I looked up and saw that I had accidentally walked down a street labeled after a song. It gave me just a smile and a tinge of hope, but after that everything slowly seemed to get better. I’d tried to return to the street on a number of occasions, but it seemed to only exist when you least expected it.

“Ok, here’s the code to the gate. If it doesn’t work, just call the little thing – it’s really annoying sometimes,” she said on the phone. It was funny because I still remembered the number. I was glad I had an excuse to hang out with Hannah. We had gone to elementary school together and had been close knit friends until we entered different junior high worlds. Luckily our friendship struck up again during Confirmation. I’d borrowed a dress from her and never got around to giving it back during the summer, so I called her this weekend while I was depressed about my undecided future. I figured this was a good way to feel not so disconnected.

She didn’t live too far away from me, but in all our years as friends there had never been a time when I didn’t get lost on the way to her house. I was listening to Sufjan Stevens in the rain and vaguely remember turning my wheels in the right direction, until I second guessed myself and looked to see if I’d gone too far.

Sunrise Drive…Candleridge….I pulled into a street to turn myself around and gazed at the raindrop smeared sign to see where I actually was. It read Skyline Drive.

I actually got out of the car to make sure I read it right the first time. Then I watched the rain fall and subconsciously mouthed the words to Chicago, wondering if it would be here when I drove by again. I had driven this road so many times that I couldn’t understand why I had only seen it today.

I knew it was her house when I saw the swing set. There had been many a day that we spent outside on the trampoline, too. Sometimes we just explored all over the woods and in other people’s yards. Now that we were teenagers, we holed up in her room and talked for hours over popcorn and trash TV. We made plans to hang out more. We even laughed over the fact that I could teach her some guitar, since she and her friends are in their ‘we want to start a band’ phase. I had hit that phase last year with my friends, and it made me smile to think that we still had a lot in common. It reminded me that sometimes, the best friends you’ll have are the first ones you make. And I wanted to think that graduation, college, and anything else life threw at us were just a way to keep things fresh. I didn’t want to believe that it meant the end of anything. It’s just that lately, I have. I've made a few great friends in my seventeen years, and I hate the thought of being far away while everyone else was growing up somewhere else without me.

By the time I was making my way home it was sunny again. I saw the turning colors of the leaves and all the fields that hadn’t surrendered to subdivisions. It was nice to know that some things might stay the same.

And I saw skyline drive again, so I must be on the right track.

… you came to take us
all things go, all things go
to recreate us
all things grow, all things grow
we had our mindset
all things know, all things know
you had to find it
all things go, all things go…

“Chicago” by Sufjan Stephens