Autumn in the Middle West of the United States

I had cause recently, to look at the weather forecast for my home city of Lincoln, Nebraska (though I'd do it without cause as well; Midwesterners are like that about weather).  Supposed to be uncommonly warm, hot even, into next week, the first week of October.  As a general rule, early October can be counted on to bring unmistakably autumnal weather to the northern great planes, although since my undergraduate days some fifteen years ago, it seems to be staying hotter longer.  Still, Lincoln does tend to get the cool mornings and evenings and the dry sunshine of fall by this time of year irrespective of daytime highs.  And while weather of almost any sort can be a powerful evocator, I think it's autumn in the midwest (however warm) that will always break my heart.  The smells, or actually the lack of them, the light, the feel of the air, the early darkness, the ancient rhythms of the harvest, playoff baseball, pumpkins, apples, brown grass, firewood, silence.  Autumn in the midwest was always the time when I wanted to fit in, when I looked around me and thought, yes, I want to be a part of this, I want to try.  But of course, I never found a way.  Brown grass and apples happen everywhere in autumn, but there's a particular quality to it all in the Midwest, owing to the sparseness and openness of the land, and it's that quality which, no matter where I am in the world, will always remind me of what I wanted to keep and couldn't.