This year’s October was again warmer than historical
averages.
Unremittently sunny too, which helped maintain the warmth.
Often breezy, rarely truly chill.
But it’s the ongoing drought told this autumn’s tale.
Consequently, the season offered an ongoing mishmash.
Resilient green, vibrant reds and yellows, stark bare branches all at
once.
Harsh light cast through all.
Eventually, ever shrinking days took their toll.
And the world again turned.
spider survival
rides on webbed cunning
flown into by prey
As happens, that bee shook itself free in the nick of time.
So no bees were harmed during the making of that picture.
Be the bee.
Shake yourself free while you've still half a chance.
Leave the hungry spider hanging.
…to fall.
For this year's golden season to finally be
something other than just more stubborn summer
steadily degrading.
Thankfully a bit cooler, this past summer ran hot. Damned hot.
In any event distinctly softer
with longer light
and less of it,
given autumn’s inexorably shorter, increasingly reflective days.
They say that from today going forward the season will at last revert to normal for the duration.
That's the official word, at least.
Except since normal’s rendered utterly relative these days,
I wonder how we’ll ever know.
Starting quite young and continuing for fifteen straight years
thereafter, deep autumn tent camping in Superior’s southern wilderness was
my annual peak season.
The time every year when I explicitly challenged myself against a wild and sometimes frighteningly fast turning world.
Most years, that adventure was fully engaged exactly now.
Like the week one September it never got above 45° F, rained for five straight
days and on the sixth day, it snowed. Four inches.
By & large, my companions and I had a blast. And on occasion
we didn’t much, we learned stuff.
Things that’d go on to enrich, empower and sustain us the
rest of our lives.
Because each and every year we returned to edge season wilderness driven by evolving purpose. Through that, we were gifted lessons in perennial perseverance.
Of my two stalwart fellow travelers I’d the good fortune to marry Heather reasonably young, while Johnny’s recently dead.
Such is life.
In the good old days, when winter’s hard edge typically first
arrived in Michigan's Upper Peninsula wilderness, we were there to brave it.
On the calendar then, that'd be just about now.
These days, prime time autumn viewing along Superior’s southern shore is preempted until conditions are met, likely nearer the middle of October. That was all but genuine winter, back when.
Time sure friggin’ flies under our unyielding whip, eh?
Just the same, I think being able to justly say long time
gone now is an unadulterated good thing.
Turns out this is my 300th post.
That wasn’t at all the original plan.
Yet, here we still are.
And more of us, besides.
Turns out life can sprout from the hardest rock. Flowers, even.
I’ve got proof.
Imagine that.
Anyway, It's always darkest just before dawn.
At least folk used to say.
Primarily, oak forest.
Basically, old growth.
In any event, mature.
I’d never walked it before. And golden autumn's on the way.
Yee ha.
