Autumn Colors

"But see the fading many-colored woods

Shade deepening over shade. . ."

~ Henry David Thoreau, quoting Thomson, 1862

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Due to a rainy spring and a very dry summer and autumn, our leaves are turning later this year than other years and are more brown and gold than crimson and orange. This is no bad thing; the woods are lovely, especially in the golden hour between evening and sunset, when golden light floods through golden trees, making all seem gold.

It has been a slow autumn, dipping gently from Indian Summer towards blustery November, and the snows and cold winds of winter. We are on a graceful downward path as the year cycles to its close and it is a journey to be enjoyed and relished, ravenously. 

Mornings cool enough for mist, low hanging on the trees that fringe the hills, and wood smoke curling up quietly from homes with windows and doors shut against the chill. But days warm enough for short sleeves, almost making  one believe that really, October is not as far gone as it is. And evenings that come on slowly, and red sunsets, and early nights for looking at stars shifting into their winter positions. 

In the woods the children look for deer track and places where one has bedded down, indicated by flattened grass, often cozily burrowed out from tall stalks. When they find one, they lay down, too, and tell me oh! How comfortable it is!

Sometimes we pluck a bit of fragrant cedar to bring home, or find gifts of feathers on the ground. We all bring home memories of gold.

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"From deep secluded recesses,

From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,

Came the carol of the bird."

~ Walt Whitman