Finding Autumn

Autumn isn’t really a brilliant season on the farm this year.  A summer’s-end drought too early curled green leaves into dried brown husks before offering them up to the winds.  

The more resilient oaks fan only marbled pale yellows mixed with olive and brown, their stretching trunks wrapped high and round with hints of crimson painted on sturdy cords.

This is one of the things I will come to miss most at this time of year—the Thanksgiving trip up north to Michigan, a two-day’s drive through fields and mountains, wide open farms and dense rugged wilderness…through Autumn, itself.

While we journeyed far north last year, this year’s circumstances didn’t make such a trip possible.  So, on Thanksgiving Day, our family filled every seat in our mini van and journeyed a mere hour away to find Fall.  

We didn’t have to search hard, not really. Over this hill, deep in that valley, beside the dried-up lake with its cypress knees jutting high out of crawfish pocked mud.

And then, there it was in patches.  Radiant. Back lit by the high afternoon sun, gently tousled by a breeze, like a horse shaking out its mane to show off a multifaceted beauty that can only be perceived in movement.

We scooped up the gold offered for free, the already fallen pine cones, just starting to open for winter’s feast.

We “surfed” in high-pile leafy carpets as yet untrampled by little feet and, after a rather frightening encounter with a large alligator sunning himself at the water's edge, took the road more traveled down through the forest with its peek-a-boo canopy.

It wasn't the same as the fullness of Autumn up North. (It never is, is it?)

But it satisfied a heart's longing to catch a glimpse until another year when a true gathering together is possible once again.