When I think of autumn, my mind wanders back to high school cross country days.  Entering a private school in Hillside as a high school freshman, I was out of my element.  Only a few miles away from my Elizabeth junior high, it seemed like another world.  Everybody had to participate in a fall team sport, either soccer, football or cross country.  I was too small for football, never played soccer but knew how to run.  So I went out for cross country on the first day, wearing basketball sneakers, running a mile around the fields, then a quarter mile on the track.  Dead tired.  The races were 2 ½ miles long …

The race began at the football field goal post, a half time diversion if there was a home game.  Filled with anticipation and dread, we awaited the pop of the starter pistol.  Our course wound around the sports fields and then veered off into a wooded trail.  This was my favorite part, crunching leaves along the way.  It was a bit difficult to pass but we tried anyway.  Exiting the trail to wind around other fields and then back onto the path.  This is where I hit what the coach called the “wall of pain.”  Breathing became harder.  Take deep breaths they said.  Easier said than done.  Finally emerging back onto the sports fields and crossing the finish line on the track.

The team became a close-knit group, a band of misfits, trick or treating at the end of practice on Halloween, encouraging each other to scale the wall, realizing how immature we were as freshmen once we were seniors.  Weathering what seemed like the change of seasons within the season, sweating in September, enjoying the cool breeze and changing leaves in October and surviving the cold November days.  We were good, never great.  We were more than enough.