Shining Light on the Prairie - Autumn ’25, too

Prime time.

Such as that actually occurred.

In any event, this year I embraced autumn like I’d been born to it.

Which of course I was.

I even revisited a cherished landscape of my youth.

Along its modern border, a great glacier long ago left a short line of steep rubble mounds piled sky high upon an otherwise resolutely flat landscape.

Started climbing to the top, just for old time’s sake. Made it halfway up then turned back, knowing full well what’s on the other side.

Which is just more scoured world rendered woeful obsolete, yet damnably stubborn.

No matter. I aced what vestige of that ruin I came for.

As is common these days, drought’s scar leavened the joy. There ought to be water here, except there’s been none to speak of quite the while now.

Over time, both the land and its most resilient inhabitants adjust.

Those that can’t either migrate off their native landscape or become part of it.

Nevertheless.

This year's prime time autumn proved particularly productive for me.

Full of bright sunny days spent afield, awash in impossible contrasts melded as one together all the same.

Then the world again turned, as it will.

And the moment it did found me distinctly present.

Shining Light on the Prairie, Autumn ‘25

This year’s October was again warmer than historical averages.

Unremittently sunny too, which helped maintain the warmth.

Often breezy, rarely truly chill.

But it’s the ongoing drought told this autumn’s tale.

Consequently, the season offered an ongoing mishmash.

Resilient green, vibrant reds and yellows, stark bare branches all at once.

Harsh light cast through all.

Eventually, ever shrinking days took their toll.

And the world again turned.

Freedom

 

spider survival

rides on webbed cunning

flown into by prey

 

As happens, that bee shook itself free in the nick of time.

So no bees were harmed during the making of that picture.

 

Be the bee.

 

 

Shake yourself free while you've still half a chance.

 

Leave the hungry spider hanging.

 

Waiting on prairie autumn…

 

…to fall.

For this year's golden season to finally be

something other than just more stubborn summer

steadily degrading.

Thankfully a bit cooler, this past summer ran hot. Damned hot.

In any event distinctly softer

with longer light

and less of it,

given autumn’s inexorably shorter, increasingly reflective days.

They say that from today going forward the season will at last revert to normal for the duration.

That's the official word, at least.

Except since normal’s rendered utterly relative these days,

I wonder how we’ll ever know.

Superior Autumn, unretouched

Starting quite young and continuing for fifteen straight years thereafter, deep autumn tent camping in Superior’s southern wilderness was my annual peak season.

The time every year when I explicitly challenged myself against a wild and sometimes frighteningly fast turning world.

Most years, that adventure was fully engaged exactly now.

Like the week one September it never got above 45° F, rained for five straight days and on the sixth day, it snowed. Four inches.

By & large, my companions and I had a blast. And on occasion we didn’t much, we learned stuff.

Things that’d go on to enrich, empower and sustain us the rest of our lives.

Because each and every year we returned to edge season wilderness driven by evolving purpose. Through that, we were gifted lessons in perennial perseverance.

Of my two stalwart fellow travelers I’d the good fortune to marry Heather reasonably young, while Johnny’s recently dead.

Such is life.

In the good old days, when winter’s hard edge typically first arrived in Michigan's Upper Peninsula wilderness, we were there to brave it.

On the calendar then, that'd be just about now.

These days, prime time autumn viewing along Superior’s southern shore is preempted until conditions are met, likely nearer the middle of October. That was all but genuine winter, back when.

Time sure friggin’ flies under our unyielding whip, eh?

Just the same, I think being able to justly say long time gone now is an unadulterated good thing.

Turns out this is my 300^th post.

That wasn’t at all the original plan.

Yet, here we still are.

And more of us, besides.

Turns out life can sprout from the hardest rock. Flowers, even.

I’ve got proof.

Imagine that.

Anyway, It's always darkest just before dawn.

At least folk used to say.