by Eric Marks

IF YOU were to ask my youngest friend what she likes most about September, she would assume a shy, thoughtful air, then brighten immediately. "New clothes!," she'd say, smiling broadly, pronouncing her choice with satisfaction and enthusiasm.

And why not? Before you tsk-tsk this budding consumer, think back to your own days in school. What excited you? Be honest. Maybe the prospect of seeing all your friends, but then they'd been around in the summer, too. With all due respect, it probably wasn't the teachers, at least not until you'd been in school long enough to distinguish the good from the bad. And it certainly wasn't the stale air of classrooms, the smell of Dustbane and chalk and antiseptic mops.

I'd wager it was the stuff of school that set your pulse racing, as much as anything else - the smell of freshly sharpened pencils in pencil cases, the solid slap and scuff of sneakers on polished tile, the comfortable drape of clothes that were new, or at least new to us.

The other day a colleague of mine, who has been out of school more years than she attended, admitted she still feels a powerful urge to buy new clothes in August and early September. This confession was greeted by a chorus of "Yeahs" and "Don't I know it" from everyone else in earshot.

After 13 years of kindergarten and grade school and another four or more of university, it seems preparing for new beginnings in the fall is a habit we just can't shake. And it's a self-perpetuating tradition: parents take vicarious pleasure in outfitting their children for school.

That thwarted passion also has its ugly side. Remember the fashion disasters? The odd, unloved items, like Roch Carrier's detestable Maple Leafs hockey sweater, that were foisted on you by proud, well-meaning parents but set your ears to reddening and tingling with shame? Smart, Sunday-best corduroy slacks and jackets when everyone else was wearing faded denim. Form-fitting velour tops when loose cotton was all the rage.

Styles change, but not the keenly-felt stigma of looking out of step: today's teens cringe at the sight of slim, straight-legged pants, disdaining anything that doesn't look as though it came from a tent-maker's fire sale.

Ah, sweet misery of youth.

THERE IS just one article of clothing I think of now when I feel autumn coming on. It hangs in the closet next to my fishing vest and leather shop apron: an old wool mackinaw, warm and slightly worn with hard use.

I bought it at a thrift store, the kind that buys clothing from charities by the carton or the pound, cleans it and marks it up for resale. It stood out from the other clothes on the rack like a distant relation in a crowd of strangers.

The outside is blanket-weight wool, checkered red and black. The inside is thick blaze orange fleece, reversible, so it can be turned inside-out for October logging or November deer hunts. It is the quintessential yard and bush jacket, the kind you hang on a hook on the back of the kitchen door and reach for as you leave the house.

It had been worn a long time. The fleece cuffs and collar were scuffed threadbare in places, but the shoulders were straight and square as the man who'd filled them. I wondered who he was, and what accident or impulsive act had separated him from his favourite jacket. Most likely he had died, and his clothes had been given away.

The contents of the jacket's pockets told the story of his life, or part of it: there was a packet of artificial sweetener in the left breast pocket for mellowing black tea; a wooden match and long tobacco shreds clinging in a front waist pocket; axe chips of alder and chainsaw chips of birch in the open slash pockets where he'd warmed his gloved hands; a chainsaw gasket, old and weak.

Whatever his other credentials had been, the jacket's owner had been an honour student of woodcraft. If I had found a pipe and a compass, a bone-handled pocketknife sharpened nearly to a nub and a couple of .22 shells, one hollow point, one birdshot, I wouldn't have been surprised.

The jacket reminded me of a child's bookbag, tossed in a closet at the beginning of summer with pencil crayon shavings, scraps of paper and candy wrappers still inside. For months at a time, it had ceased to exist, waiting for autumn to bring it to life again, until, one year, the autumn never came.

I don't know how many seasons have passed since the mackinaw was worn, but it still holds all the promise of the season. And, like a child attired for school in new fall clothes, I look forward to that promise as a challenge.

Now that Labor Day is past and the afternoons and evenings are cooling, I'll wear the jacket berrying and mushroom hunting and fishing for autumn trout in deep, shaded pools where its red and black will not be seen. Soon I'll fill the pockets with wild apples. In hunting season, it will help me slip quietly between snagging branches as I search for grouse and woodcock and deer. And when I chop wood, the chips can fall where they may.

Like the jacket's original owner, I've graduated from the crush and murmur of school to other autumn rituals. The fashions are different, but the feeling of excitement is the same.

-Eric Marks is a full-time editor and part-time writer whose essays and poems have been published in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. He lives a stone's throw from the Gulf of Maine in Saint John, New Brunswick.