When I first moved to California, my late mother in law, a lifelong Californian, once remarked around this time of year that she could tell fall was close by the way the light fell through the windows. In my young, proud New Englanders mind, this struck me as nothing more than a weak substitute for the mountains exploding in color, the mercury swinging between freezing and boiling, the shared sense of hunkering down for the onslaught of natural punishment, a weak trade for a life where every conversation was a side-bet on the length of the coming dark,cold months of collective one-upmanship of Us vs Nature.