The end of summer marks my favorite time of the year. It is bittersweet, yes, but when I start to feel autumn’s bracing weather, which lifts the spirit and brings the rush of sweet cool air in the morning, I know that I am in the midst of the best days of the year.

The feeling starts earlier, though, around the 15th of August, when the angle of the sun as it arcs across the sky changes. It drifts a little lower, not climbing as high in the heavens as it had been doing since June 21, the summer solstice, and, in fact has been inching downward every day since. Those lowering emanating rays strike the earth a little more horizontally instead of beating down directly from overhead. And that alteration in angle makes all the difference. Light becomes softer, warmer, more inviting in late afternoon. The days get shorter and soon the September light begins its honey glow.

The sounds of the golden days are different, too. At night, the air conditioner is no longer humming and my open windows bring in the soft quiet of a late summer evening. My neighbors have shut off their air conditioners, too, allowing my mind to gently drift off into the pages of a bedtime read. And in the morning, the distant sound of pickleball rackets tock-tocking back and forth returns through my open window as does the sweet morning air. Humidity has been swept away and, energized, I jump up to face the day.

The bracing lift of renewed Vineyard air builds into October. My daughter got married 16 years ago to her college sweetheart on the beach at the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club on Oct. 2. I relive that magic day every year, pushing my toes into the cooling sands on the beach as I walk toward the shore along the path on which I held my daughter’s hand, and then at the water’s edge, lifted it up towards her new husband-to-be. The sky was a bright cobalt blue with not a wisp of a cloud overhead. Invariably, each succeeding Oct. 2 is the same.

On the water itself, Holmes Hole sailing races still take place, only now instead of the starting horn blowing at 6 p.m. as in summer, the boats cross the line at 5 p.m. or earlier. The weather gets rougher and the number of boats coming out of the inner harbor to race dwindle to just three or four. By Halloween, the racing season is over and all boats have been pulled and stowed for the winter.

My first fall on the Vineyard was in 1972, the year I graduated from college. I had decided to stay through the winter and rented a house on Tashmoo avenue. I remember running for the ferry on a mid-October day. I was wearing my usual summer garb — short sleeve shirt, shorts and sandals — and I felt something I had never felt on the Vineyard before. I was cold. Goose bumps rose on my arms. I almost stopped mid-stride at the shiver and shock. It gets cold on the Vineyard? A summer kid who had never stayed much past Labor Day, I was being introduced to an unacknowledged reality. Winter does indeed come to Martha’s Vineyard.

It makes those days of shimmering, amber light all the more precious. Hold onto them as tight as you can.

David Lott lives in Vineyard Haven.