autumnal musings

Ld and I took a ride up Hobble Creek Canyon last weekend. The leaves are just starting to turn. Here’s proof:


Last year I clipped this from the Sun-Times “Ready or not, you’ve been heading toward a fall”:

Autumn is…when the trees cut off nutrients to the leaves, and the leaves are slowly strangled to death.
The green becomes red and orange and yellow as it happens.
If the leaves of the trees could scream, they would scream.
This is pretty much what you need to know about autumn.

Hmmm. All that beauty from so much pain. Deep, deep. I love it.
So much to love about the season: the colors, smell, crisp air and light. Especially the light. It’s so different in Autumn. All yellow and buttery warm. Cate and I spend as much time outside under the tree as we can. There is no other place she would rather be. Me, too.


I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.
--Nathaniel Hawthorne
Yup. Pretty much sums up my days. But, it's not just me. Most everyone I know is passionate about Autumn. Just so much substance and abundance to the season.

If you find Fall bringing out your inner philosopher too, then maybe you'll want to check out:

Vivaldi's Four Seasons (Autumn)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA8EJQOqbdo&feature=related

Oh, and a little Frost.
http://www.coldbacon.com/poems/frost.html
From his “Unharvested”

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.

And from his “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
(Love this one. Kenz did a modern dance set to it once in high school. Remember, Kenz?)
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold,
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

And then this:
The Last Leaf—O.Henry (1862-1910)
here:
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lastleaf.html
or here:
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/LasLea.shtml

Rent the movie here:
http://www.ldsmovierentals.com/DetailList.asp?titleno=226

(The Church made a short film of this some years ago. It stars, believe it or not, Jane Kaczmarek, the crazy mom from Malcom in the Middle and Art Carney of the Honeymooners) The film is actually quite good.