The Boots Are Waiting

Snow on the mountains, summer in the closet, and a standoff nobody asked for.

There is snow on the mountains and summer in my closet, and neither of us is moving until somebody blinks.

It was 85 yesterday. Today it's 80, which the forecast presents as relief, the way a hostage negotiator presents a granola bar. Meanwhile, out west, the peaks have already gone white. You can see winter from here. It's right there on the horizon, idling like a car outside a party, and it will not come in.

So I'm holding out.

The summer clothes are still hanging. The winter clothes are still wherever winter clothes go to think about what they've done. And the boots, which are good boots with opinions, are waiting in the dark like understudies who've memorized every line and get told, nightly, not tonight.

The changeover is not a chore

People who don't care about clothes think the closet switch is housekeeping. Fold, stack, rotate, done.

It isn't housekeeping. It's a ceremony, and like most ceremonies it only works if you mean it.

You switch the closet on the day you accept a season is over. Not the day the calendar says so, and not the day the coffee shops start pumping cinnamon into the ventilation. The day you believe it. Switching early is a lie you tell your sweaters. Switching late is grief. Either way, the ceremony needs the weather to commit first, and Denver weather has never committed to anything in its life.

Who broke first

Meanwhile the sidewalk has become a loyalty test, and I'm keeping score.

The Boot Loyalists. Full boots at 80 degrees. They chose the calendar over the thermometer, and they will die on that hill, sweating, faces arranged into an expression that says this is fine, actually. I respect anyone committed to a bit past the point of reason. I would also like them to stand a little farther away.

The Sandal Holdouts. Toes out like it's a policy position. They think they've won. They have won for exactly one more week, and somewhere deep in the arch of the foot, they know it.

The Bare-Ankle Hedge. Ankle boots, no tights, bare leg in between. This isn't an outfit. It's a coalition government. It wants credit for fall without paying for it. Every season has a centrist, and this is it.

The Early Purchaser. Already bought something for a season that hasn't arrived. A coat, tags still on, hanging on the back of a door like a promise. Optimism or denial, depending on whether they kept the receipt.

And then there's me, standing in summer clothes I'm technically finished with, refusing to switch on principle.

Discipline, or superstition

I'd like to tell you this is discipline. It's closer to superstition.

Because I know exactly how this goes. The day I switch the closet, the heat will hold just to spite me, and I'll be in a wool blend in a parking lot, reconsidering every decision that led me here. But if I wait, arms folded, the season will feel the pressure and fold first.

Discipline and superstition are mostly the same thing in better shoes. Both are ways of pretending you get a vote in something you don't.

What it's actually about

Here's the part I'd rather not say out loud: it isn't the weather.

I don't like changing costumes before the scene changes. I don't want to dress for a version of my life the world hasn't confirmed yet. I've done it before, bought the outfit for who I'd be by spring, by fall, by the time things settled. Most of those outfits are still waiting too.

So the boots stay in the dark, running their lines. Summer stays on the hangers, overstaying its welcome with real conviction. And I stay exactly where I am, between a season that won't leave and one that won't come in, looking very composed about it.

Snow on the mountains. Eighty on the street.

I'll switch the closet when winter walks in and says my name. Until then, summer and I are holding the line.