Fall approaches!

[mobirdhunter]

Originally Posted by Stan Hillis

There is a subtlety that Lloyd's first pic captures that the others don't, and that I haven't seen yet in the deep South this year, that of the late evening sunlight having a glow that isn't present during the rest of the year. It is the signal to me that fall is approaching. The golden glow of it is captured in that first pic perfectly. I can see it here even before the leaves begin to turn. All of a sudden, one late afternoon, it is there and it fills me with warmth and hope. It took my wife some number of years to learn to notice it, but now she does, too.

It will happen here next month. I have always wondered if it is some angle of sunlight that I cannot measure or accurately describe. Nonetheless, it is as real as the sun itself. And, the thing that it awakens in me is as real as I am, or maybe more so.

Things like what Stan describes really don’t need explanation. They are sensed, felt — a part of our immersion in the natural world. You hunters know what I mean, like the primordial smell of the grouse woods after a rain, or the quality of sound after a long day on the prairie, just after the sun leaves only a glimmer at the horizon and day turns to gloaming. We are all richer for these things.