Chapter Fourteen
The transition from summer to autumn had been my favorite time of year back in Minnesota where I grew up. San Diego experienced a gentle transition, but I enjoyed the clear crisp mornings that brought relief from the incessant summer heat. Liquidambar trees slowly turned into a blaze of fiery color: crimson, gold, salmon, and ochre. Fallen leaves, their outer edges curled with dryness, scratched and skittered along sidewalks in the wind much as they did back home. Hillsides, already browned from lack of rain, flattened as tired plants drooped under their own weight. Perhaps the most distinct difference in the change of seasons came with the end of daylight savings time. Evening hours grew short and seemed to disappear altogether into the increasingly cool darkness of the
