Fall In The Air

I once wrote the following after a pleasant late-summer saunter through woodlands near Gainesville, Florida.

I visited a place off of Millhopper Road early this morning, west of the interstate. The hike began and ended on the top of a grassy rise dotted sparsely with pines. The morning air was cool and dry and breezy, and the countryside was mostly quiet except for the wind sighing in the pines, with that unmistakable hint of Fall in the air. Blessed, rapturous, wonderful Fall! In the air!

On this clear morning I am quietly quite beside myself with anticipation and excitement, for soon comes my favorite time of the year when the air is sweet with drying vegetation, when the slant of the sunlight through the trees is wonderfully "just so" and has that morning-in-the-mountains feel for me, and when the passerines begin their sojourn back from the North. Autumn is a time when the natural world slows down, pulls up and takes stock, takes a new cleansing breath, flies its banners, and then exhales sweetly into the restful winter. I, on the other hand, become innervated by that sweet expiration. I move around more, feel more creative, am happier, accomplish more. I breathe deeper and contemplate more. My tread is lighter and I feel blithe and light on my feet. My internal landscape seems keener, more focused, more alive, more Summer-like, as if the slanting light of shorter days permits me to see and guide myself anew and clearer by my own confident inner lights. During the Fall and early Winter I feel more right with the world and move through it cleaner and more peaceably than at other times in the year. My heart swells and my capacity to love widens.

What a wonderful gift this change of seasons is for me, and what a wonderful gift it is to be walking literally and figuratively through the seasons with such as you. Oh, great days are ahead! Great Days.

Autumn, Fall, walking, hiking, Florida