What About Fall?

Living in a northern city, I can appreciate the trepidation that arrives with the changing of the leaves. It seems it’s either feast or famine for us thanks to the joys of climate change. We will get summer a little later and then we get a few days where it’s warm and makes you think of childhood days running through leaf piles and dreaming of the Halloween season. Then the temperature drops and it snows a little and the end of October comes and no one wants to be outside because it’s bitterly cold without the fun of being winter or snowy. 

Fall is more of a fling than a tangible relationship. It doesn’t even register as a torrid affair. It’s just there and gone and you think of it wistfully and those days gone by. 

It stinks. 

The thing though that is worse is that most outdoor events just DRY UP as soon as it hits or is near fall. Since most festivals and events don’t really get going until May it makes for a really busy summer. 

Too busy. 

Where I live, Flint, they back load SO many events into August that it’s just too much. It’s hard to say – no, stop! – when it comes to giving people options of things to do but it really is too much. People either aren’t looking at the calendar or don’t care. For me, I am sort of beholden to when there is availability at the spot I do events. I do my best not to run into anyone but if I do, well, some things can’t be helped. An indoor event though and a festival sort of event are different though. They are bigger and tend to be someone renting space or needing to put a hold on a date so why don’t they look at a calendar?

Does everything have to happen in a few months?

Really?

Why not fall?

I totally get that weather in the fall can be dodgy but…why not fall? Here’s the thing, weather is weather. It’s gonna do what it does. All you can do is plan around it and for it. I have been at a huge car show where a sudden storm scared everyone off, blew stuff around, and nearly took a giant tent that was weighted down away. In the middle of summer or spring storms can hit and you can even get those rare days that are just cool and overcast. It happens. With fall, sure, it could be cool, and you might get rain, but you’re generally not going to get downright cold until late October. So basically you have another month to work with that give you the same problems as summer and spring do, but without needing to worry about it being TOO hot. 

Seriously, what ABOUT fall?

Why don’t we actively celebrate fall more?

We don’t have to relegate the season to apple orchards and Halloween parties. It’s a celebration of harvest. Of cooler temperatures and it’s a good time to celebrate things before we get to the end of the year holidays. Heck, you can even invite orchards out if you were so inclined. 

Or not. 

It’s about whatever your event is about. 

Right?

Personally though, I’d rather plan for fall temperatures than to have to plan how you get people to come to your event when everyone else is doing theirs in the same three month window. Give yourself a little buffer. Give yourself a chance to shine. 

A big tent and sides for it in case the weather turns. 

Have a plan for Just In Case, as you always should with weather events (though I will totally admit that I never had one when we did them but darn it, it was an outdoor movie so there wasn’t a really great backup plan other than taking shelter in case the weather did turn). Without having to worry about the heat and people overheating you can then focus on what you can do to take advantage of the season. 

Why Not Fall!

As much as I hate how little of it we get, I adore fall and what it represents. It’s a great time to, once more, stop and celebrate all we have gotten through for the year and all that is to come. Once you get into late October and into November it’s holiday season and it’s one after another. When everyone thinks of summer for festivals it’d be nice to have something to look forward to as the days get shorter. Something to celebrate before we start to look towards January and the long, cold winter before we can get outside and party together once more. 

Sure, there are wonderful things to do in the winter, and folks do hold winter carnivals, but in general, it’s more of a season of either winter sports or just bundling up and watching the snow fall. 

As someone who has done a LOT of events, I really do think it’s a shame that we don’t embrace fall more in all its wonder and challenges. Sure, it can be a real pain in the neck when you’re trying to do Halloween and it decides to snow but sometimes those sort of days give you the best sorts of stories. 

Why not fall?

Be bold and don’t compete with everyone else. 

Make everyone else want to compete with you!

…c…