The leaves are past peak, the clicks of camera shutters no longer add to the music of the forest, and people have left to settle in for winter. The fluttering gold aspen leaves of early fall are tarnished and less plentiful. They've darkened, fallen, and now grace the earth.
I've grown to love this time of year, for many reasons. In the last years of my parents' lives together, late fall is when I'd take my dog Carly and drive three days across the country to visit them. It wasn't really warm, it wasn't really cold; there wasn't much to do other than focus on being together. It was a time of connection with those I missed from living so far away.
 |
| A late fall visit with Mom and Dad |
Late fall is when I see the world with its soul bared. There's no showy spring flowers that lift spirits or offer the promise of sun and new things to come. There's no feeling of the glory days of summer with heat and leaves and grass and bugs and water and rain all mashed together into one thick green world. There's no shimmer of stunning autumn color, where the harvest gives us the fruits of our labor and when apples are sweet; and there's yet to come the hush of a white blanket of snow that crystallizes sky, breath, and ice.
 |
| Late fall, northern Minnesota |
Late fall is when the earth takes a breather from all that work. I relish the bare bones of late fall. I can take the time to remember those who are now gone and appreciate the precious time we have while alive right now. I have the time to examine the details of muted fallen leaves carpeting the trail or of those still clinging to their branch, blemished and pockmarked, bypassed by those who just a couple weeks earlier would have stopped and stared in awe.
Today, Bruce and I took Carly into the mountains that we had to ourselves. It was also the day I found out I lost a dear friend, and remembered well two other friends no longer with us, all three of whom dedicated a good portion of their lives to protecting the forest now surrounding me. And it was a day I deeply felt my memories of mom and dad.
I dedicate these images to Mom, Dad, Liz, Keith, and Don.
The cycle continues; so evident in life, and in the quiet season of late fall.
