Superior Autumn

 

For a couple youthful decades and more, each year we hurled ourselves against Superior’s late autumn wilderness.

 

Dared that to eat us.

 

Occasionally, it nearly did.

 

 

Yet every year we returned. Made stronger and more determined, by what we knew.

 

Superior woods whisper best in autumn, right until they don’t.

 

Certainly, the later we pushed our luck into October, the greater the odds of snow. It only took a couple times camping in spent woods laid low by snow, to know full well that’s not what we sought.

 

 

Timing was everything.

 

 

As of this writing, the official U.P. color tracker rates our old stomping grounds as 'partial'. Peak color, maybe next week.

 

Such a late would’ve been considered aberrant, back when. Today it’s definitely not.

In any event, we enjoyed no such informational resources.

 

Instead, every year required our best, increasingly educated guess. We had to recognize the right moment before it came, so we’d be there when it did.

 

In effect, we had to know.

 

 

Mostly that youthful learning curve worked out increasingly well for us, year over year over year.

 

Until we weren’t exactly youthful, evermore.

 

 

Seasons change. As do the times.

 

Once we’d earned our late season stripes and then some from the autumnal wilderness, we sensibly retreated to the late summer beach.

 

 

S’okay.

Because Superior autumn's perfect light lives inside me now, and always will.