(Photo courtesy of Lilia Menconi)

Lilia Menconi is the author of a hiking guide called "Moon Take a Hike Phoenix."

An essay titled “Fall Is the Worst Season” by Jia Tolentino on the site Jezebel has been making the rounds. It’s a screed on the horrors of autumn and all that it represents.

In part it reads, “Fall is seasonal twilight, the kind where the air drops 20 degrees when the sun disappears behind the buildings and you look around, suddenly detached from your body, having lost track of your desires.”

But in the Valley, fall means something entirely different. It means the end of the hellish summer and the start of something glorious. Lilia Menconi spends a lot of time outdoors. She is the author of a hiking guide called "Moon Take a Hike Phoenix." She gave her thoughts on the changing season.

I’m out of shape. I’m irritated. I’m impatient. And I’m still sweating.

But all that’s OK — because we finally made it to October. Fall. The home stretch. The time of year when we as Phoenicians can finally start dreaming about the glorious winter.

For most of the U.S., fall means the agonizing goodbye to sunshine, the outdoors, and fit bodies. It’s the beginning of the end. The spiral into seasonal defeat and eventual depression.

But not us.

Nope, we’ve paid our annual dues. We’ve dealt with the constant disappointment of the seemingly never ending triple-digit forecast.

And we’ve been hurt by our friends and families. Friends who live on the coasts Instagramming beach selfies. Families in the Midwest posting backyard barbecue photos on Facebook. We see their sunkissed faces under their blue skies and their lack of sweat rings and it hurts.

Now it’s our turn. We have a future to look forward to.

To picnics and bicycle bar crawls and afternoon walks. For me, the future is all about winter hiking.

I’m not talking about hiking with the tourists up Camelback Mountain. I’m talking about the real stuff: Seven, eight, twelve miles of cutting through canyons, hopping across washes, and tip-toeing through cholla forests without the oppressive sun or constant threat of heatstroke.

Hikes where the only sound you hear for hours is the steady crunch of rock underfoot. Where you eat a bag of baby carrots and they taste like a gourmet dessert. Where you take multiple pee breaks with just a few wimpy desert shrubs for cover. Where you get so engrossed in conversation with a friend that you can barely see the trail through the tears in your eyes.

Hiking is my winter thing. That’s what I dream about in fall.

I’m sure you have your winter thing. The thing that makes muscling through the sweltering summer worth it. Drinking on the porch, a 10 a.m. jog, or just the luxury of opening all the doors and windows to air out the house.

Start dreaming. Because the dream is about to become very, very real.

Phoenix, welcome to fall.