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.

 

Image Essay - Dancing Through Autumn

Or, making the absolute most of every last chance.

Summer's End

 

On the meteorological watch, seasons turned at precisely 12:00 am this morning.

 

As happened, this year’s summer ended not with a bang, but on the midnight whisper of an inexorably changing wind.

 

Unlike recent years past, we never reached full on drought status. The periodic downpours carried by occasionally tornadic storms saw to that.

 

Yet given the typically withering August sun, today we enter fall just on the edge of ‘abnormally dry’.

 

On those happy days when the heat and humidity weren’t too oppressive, I made a point of getting out and about.

 

As ever, the prairie and oak savanna landscape abides.

 

Often thrives.

 

Especially where we’ve since retreated…

 

…and let that inestimably rich natural environment do its splendidly diverse thing.

 

Long about the middle of August, I mentioned to a dear friend that when a changing wind finally broke the latest heat wave, I sensed the first hint of autumn on the northwesterly breeze.

I thought it kind of early for that, considering the world of green.

 

A week later, signs of seasonal change were in the trees.

And today, here we are.

 

As if there’d been a plan all along.

 

Miscellany

 

A way of being present.

Even when seemingly not, otherwise.

People tend to believe the best photographic light occurs during ‘the Magic Hour’.

That’s the half hour prior to sunrise and the half hour after sunset. So not really an hour, unless you count them together at the end a long day. Beware conventional wisdom.

 

Because in this case that’s just universality talking. Which explains the ocean of glorious sunrise/sunset moments captured and held forever on all your phones.

 

As happens, on the occasion the world falls utterly still in the face of an oncoming storm, life draws a deep breath and sometimes holds it. However long.

And in that moment, light might be made uncommonly sublime.

 

 

Shining Light on the Prairie – Wild Life, 2

 

When you’re done gazing into the liquid dark eyes so firmly locked on possible predator me, check out those ears.

Essentially, eyes in the back of her head. Aural variety sure, but no one’s sneaking up from behind on this one just the same. It struck me that this is exactly the type of physical/cognitive flexibility a creature born to be prey really needs, so to survive.

Hopefully humans, forever blinded by their riotous ingenuity, learn to adapt nearly as well.

 

Midsummer. Or, thereabouts.

I suppose there’re celestial, meteorological, climatological and/or faith-based notions to choose from, as regards the specific moment that summer’s officially half over.

Don’t care, as this summer feels a good half over to me.

 

It’s said spring is the season of rebirth and probably this last is when that downright charmer of a deer up there was born. But not every species enjoys such a long runway to maturity.

Those who don’t take full on advantage of high summer, so to get done what needs be done before autumn sets in and the cruel season close behind.

 

Intermittent downpours meant I finally found some reasonably photogenic fungi.

What with semi-regularly persistent drought as well, it's been almost two years since I scored so well.

And who the hell knew fungi had teeth? Chalk it up to the times.

 

During summer, everybody eats.

 

And bounty to choose from often stands out for the taking.

 

They say Well begun is half done.

 

Get it while you can, say others.

 

Or, time’s short.

It all depends on how one's equipped to see the world, I suppose.

 

Damned relativity.