The nights are getting cold, almost cold enough for frost to grace our mornings. There was a proto-frost, an almost-icing, on our fields yesterday morning when I walked down to get the newspapers and mail. The air was clean and the light exceedingly bright – as bright as a cloudless day in Winter.
Yes, the sun has returned to Humptulips County. At least for now.
A walk to our mail box is not long – perhaps the length of a football field each way – but there are no yard lines and the walk is not accomplished in a straight line. This time of year, it is best to walk along our driveway, which is a curving, up-and-down affair. In the Summer I will sometimes walk through our fields to get the mail, but this time of year the fields remain wet until late afternoon, and I have no wish to spend time donning boots in order to perform so mundane an activity.
The walk is not long enough to count as exercise, but it does allow enough time to take the Farm’s pulse. Birds are usually about, either visible in flight or invisibly raucous from the depths of the trees and woods. Insects grace the Summer’s walk, but aren’t readily apparent this time of year. Ants scurry about industriously along the paved portions of the driveway, just large enough to make their presence known so that I might avoid them whenever I can. Things are always growing, whether or not deemed desirable by the Farm’s human residents. Yesterday’s new growth consisted of several dozen large, moist mushrooms of various slimy descriptions growing in the darker hollows where the sun rarely finds its way. I swear they were not there two days ago when I last made the walk.
Yesterday morning, I discovered a 10 foot long spider web strung across the driveway at the half way mark just beyond our barn – a single, head-high strand placed across the driveway as if with the intent to decapitate the unwary human walker. The spider who strung it must have had visions of glory approaching megalomania.  If nothing else, he or she must have been a prodigious athlete. I debated leaving it in place to see what it might evolve into with the passing of another day, but batted it away instead while fantasizing how it would feel to be hung from it, cocooned in spider silk, awaiting inevitable disembowelment. My mind ran briefly back to Bilbo’s adventures in Mirkwood. With this in mind, I struck my blow for the freedom of both humans and hobbits alike.
After getting the mail and turning to begin my walk back, the colors surrounding our home came alive. Helen has planted bunches of color, and they are best visible at the entry to our driveway from the lane. The sweet gums are turning a bright yellow, but the yellow appears to be working up from the extremity of their drooping limbs leaving long cascades of green ending in lengthening yellow fingers.  They resemble a fireworks display that has frozen in place; or at least a fireworks display that is ever so slowly passing into its eventual fade out.
Yellows predominate, but there are a good many reds serving as accents  reds ranging from the dark dusky red of our Japanese Maple to the light watered rose of a solitary Magnolia. These lighter reds are scarce and are the most pleasing to the eye, for they seem somehow ethereal, as if brushed lightly upon the landscape by a master watercolorist who knows the value of less, the worth of grace notes.
The distant blue haze that is October’s hallmark has yet to appear, but perhaps it will grace November instead. Trees are late shedding their leaves; late in turning color. Some seem to have shed their leaves without bothering to allow them to turn, as if we humans had done something to offend them mortally and have proven unworthy of ritualistic displays of their finery.
This has been a curious, intermittent fall – rare sunny days interspersed among long foggy periods lacking light. Yesterday was one of brightness, a brightness briefly bordering on Winter’s glare, a brightness filled with blessing, a brightness ennobling the merest of tasks – a solitary walk to the mailbox.
