I’ve felt a shift in the chilled autumn air that has settled over the landscape after the scorching temperatures of summer. It’s more than just the changing colors of the leaves from green to the brilliant reds, oranges, yellows, and browns of fall. It’s not the warm feelings of a pumpkin-spiced latte or a warm apple cider. It’s not even the Christmas decorations and music that have overrun the spooky décor in all of the stores the day after Halloween. It feels like a collective sigh of brief relief and hope for change beyond the shifting color palette.
I hadn’t realized I had stopped listening to National Public Radio in the mornings or my favorite political YouTube commentators in the evenings for nearly a year. I also noticed I'd stopped writing, creating art, or really doing much of anything for months besides running and working. I haven’t even really planned a proper thru-hike that didn’t involve compensation for months. I realized I have been trying to tune the world out, and it's successfully removed me from the world in return. However, this week I felt that shift in the air and have been slowly returning.
The political spectrum often shifts from one side to another. It will sway to a more conservative side before it sways back to the liberal space. The collective often votes in ways that solve their current issues and address their concerns, regardless of whether the filter is red or blue. I believe we witnessed this phenomenon again in the “blue wave” of this past U.S. midterm election. People are seeking change after facing real hardships. They are demanding new blood to fix past problems, and that air of optimism about a possible solution has been noticed.
There is a sense of hope in this bet on a new team. People have been craving change and have actively made it happen at the polls. CIRCLE estimates that 27% of young people voted in the 2026 midterms, matching 2022, making it the second-highest youth turnout rate in a midterm election in the past 30 years. “The combination of relatively high youth voter turnout compared to previous midterms and an overwhelming preference for democrats turned young voters into a decisive force in the 2026 midterm elections.” It was so impactful that the election has been labeled as historic. “Democrats gained Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina, and Maine. Some of these states, like Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina, had not elected a Democratic senator in decades,” KCRA explained.
With this shifting energy and wave of optimism, I believe the newly elected officials' priority now should be to get things done, and the people's priority should be to hold these public servants accountable. The shift in the air is more than just the weather. My hope is that the momentum continues beyond the election results.