The Turn

Sabina's sunflowers are finally starting to bloom along the back of the house...just in time for frost...

Looking up at Eagle Rock and our back folly. With a wrinkle, a squint, and the benefit of the doubt, you might see some of the aspens turning gold...

A birthday present from a friend. I have named it Clyde, and step into my parlor, muthafucka...

Standing at the tarn of Hell's Hole, the wind kicked up. It carried with it a whisper. It spoke of layers and ice and deep drifts and avalanches. In the moment, under turquoise blue sky with very few passing cotton ball clouds and warm sun, I noted how the bonsai-baobab bristle cones were striking, and smiled at the harsh tundra beauty. Along the trail, squirrels scrambled about, stocking up for the chilled days ahead.

"It's coming," Miguel Loco said a day before.

"I'm not ready," Sabina said two days later, pointing to already changing leaves. "Don't want it."

Want and ready really have little to do with it. It just is. The turn, much like any other natural event, does not bother to consult with a species of half-bald monkeys who call themselves Man. It is folly to wish or expect otherwise.

A meteorological prophet of whom I give some credence on account of odds called the day after my birthday most likely the warmest day of the rest of the year. It was a lovely day, with a gentle breeze, strikingly clear skies, and soft sunlight. Sabina and I wandered what we deduced were some old logging roads. I was fascinated by some of the rock formations. The landscape there looked to be conducive to a good snowshoe come winter.

That night, we had a chiminea with leftover cake and generous glasses of wine. It was a deliciously warm evening. The stars were brilliant and the first quarter moon, obscured by Pendleton, illuminated the ridge line in phantasmal hues.

Here it is the beginning of autumn. There was a dusting atop my personal Kilimanjaro, twelve-thousand, two-hundred, eighty-two feet high. In some places, it's late summer. Harvest time. In other spots, spring has sprang.

Time is an abstract...

There are places that have never known seasons. Voids where the nearest star is just one of the brighter ones you might see looking up at night. Locations that have never been-and perhaps never will be-insulted by a name given to it by a human being. There's poetry in that, but perhaps I'm just getting philosophical.

I know better than to thank or blame the time of year or the weather out my front door for my introspective and philosophical bents. These things just happen, like the turning of early autumn leaves from emerald to gold. It just is, simple as that.