The Sun Also Rises

Ah, now we're getting some color. Autumn has seemed reluctant this year, or maybe it's just my anticipation. This will be the first Autumn that I've spent here in my own woods in a decade. The trees have faded, hinting at the colors they might turn, but stay mostly green. Some of them have turned, but to dark subdued tones, they way that they do in a dry year, or late in the season. I can't understand that, it's been a wet year; perhaps too wet?

But as I say, now some real color appears. I noticed it first up in the north of the state, by Fort Wayne, that day I blew a gasket: deep, rich, intense reds, oranges and yellows. It's still mostly only here and there, but sometimes there's a whole stand of trees in color, and if they're all different species, different hues together, they strike a chord that makes my gut sing.

Yes, it's probably just anticipation that makes me fear for fall. I just don't remember what it's like being in the same place throughout the season. I'm rubbing my hands together greedily now; the best is yet to come.

But there's a dark side. I couldn't see the Eel River, nor the Wabash on my way to South Bend yesterday morning. Dawn hadn't begun to brighten the sky yet. We're heading into the long dark. Looking at the bright side though I remember countless years when it'd be dark when I got to work, and dark when I left again, in the dead of winter. With this job, where I start out in the deep dark even during summer, with Dawn as my trusty companion, it'll still be light when I get off work, plus it'll be dark by the time I'm ready for bed. I could take the blankets down from in front of my bedroom window. It's all a tradeoff I guess; it's all good, and when I once lived where there was no winter I found that I missed it.

Dawn today was interesting. It's been wet, I mean really wet. Driving home yesterday afternoon I had the windshield wipers on high and still had to go slowly, peering hard to see where I was going. Coming through the forest on my way home I checked Sample Road, the quickest way from my house to the highway and the way that I go to work, to see if it was open again yet. They've been replacing the drainage systems at several spots along the road. It was open and I thought to myself that it's a good thing they got it finished, or it might have all been washed out and they'd have had to start over.

Considering the rain we'd had I was glad too because the next quickest way to the highway, actually the quickest way if you're going south, winds through the Beanblossom bottom lands. There's a sign there that stands year round and says, “Do not cross when flooded.” I have to wonder what that looked like this morning. There was a sign put up on the four lane divided that said HIGH WATER, and that was on the top of the hill!

Do you remember when I was talking about mist, and the way that it holds light? Well, mist is intimate. Imagine an entire atmosphere saturated with moisture. I was heading north again, to Fort Wayne this time, away from the sunrise. Yet the sky and very air before me became suffused with light, an electric blue, long before the sun itself appeared on my right hand side. It was an interesting dawn. But then they all are.

Dawn, my trusty companion.