I’m catching up with myself, from this time a few years back when I imagined keeping up all along through an entire year with a seasonal journal–part of my “Floyd County Almanac” that sits just exactly where it did when I abandoned it.
I remember as I wrote this thinking how smug of me to look out my window at leaves almost all fallen from the trees and all insect night noises silenced while I simply went upstairs and brought down the long sleeves when winter approached.
Not a one of the millions of other living things we share the northern hemisphere with have it so easy!
From autumn of 2012, here’s a first paragraph of a longer piece uploaded to Medium, should you care to read or bookmark.
Autumn a Change in Cadence and Key
[su_quote]Though a few poetic souls and tree-hugging types like me will make soft cooing noises about the magic of the coming of fall, many pay no mind to these aesthetics at all. And for most of my fellow humans, from a practical, survival point of view, autumn connotes no more inconvenience than the putting-on of a warmer pair of slippers of a morning. [/su_quote]
I love this essay, fellow naturalist. Autumn is coming very late to southern Utah, so our plans to photograph yellow cottonwood leaves against red rock will not come to pass. We hit it spot on last year. Most of the campgrounds have closed, out of habit.