by Seth Warburton

Autumn, that greatest of all Iowa seasons, is finally upon us.  Winter and summer overbearing.  Spring’s dramatic thunderstorms and new blooms are over-celebrated by excitable poet-types.  Autumn arrives like a Midwesterner at a party, softly sidling in, refusing to interrupt, and only revealing its presence in a quiet moment with a chill in the air, a combine in the fields, or a red leaf on a maple.  Fall may not be desperate to be noticed, but is worth engaging your senses with it all the same.

I first felt autumn this year with my foot - stepping on a black walnut, which squished then rolled beneath me.  You can probably conjure the smell to mind now.  In “Forest Walking,” tree scientist Peter Wohlleben steps away from hard science and into the sensory experience of being in a wild place.  Turn over rough rocks, sniff a pine bough, crunch and crackle leaves underfoot, look up to catch a parting glance of birds migrating south.  The fall migration is a great time to start birding, and Nate Swick’s “Birding for the Curious” provides the perfect starting point for the hobby, refusing to get bogged down in the specifics of identification.  Instead, Swick invites you to notice the subtleties of shape, pattern, color and movement with specific activities.

More domestic sensory pleasures abound in fall too.  Coastal elites would have us believe that the taste of fall is a bit of cinnamon in a latte, but Midwesterners know better, daring to use pumpkin spice on things like … pumpkin.  Avoid fanciness when choosing a cook book for autumn.  For example, instead of delicate broths to be served cold, you want something like the crowd-pleasing soups from Kathy Gunst’s “Soup Swap.”  There are plenty of hearty choices, even those without meat, and the author knows that cornbread is best cooked in a cast-iron skillet.  “Dappled: Baking Recipes for Fruit Lovers,” by Nicole Rucker seems another likely candidate to me.  Pie is great, and Rucker’s are pretty, but she also recognizes that sometimes the best pie recipe is a cobbler (or buckle, or brown betty, or crisp) for when it’s chilly and you don’t want to fuss. 

Whether fall is your season to get outside or to stay in, the Ames Public library has the perfect books to help your senses engage the season.