Happy October

This young of the year cow was practically posing for me - I had stopped to look because some people with New Jersey plates had told me there was a moose up ahead. Moose are rare in Colorado but can be found. I rather think though that the tourists mistook the longhorns that were in the pasture for the moose as there was none in sight.

Autumn Glory

I've been out enjoying the fall colors this "weekend" (my weekend being Sun/Mon this week). This weekend is probably the peak for fall colors up in the high country. Today I went for an over-the-continental-divide drive with my parents to enjoy the views. My dad and I really wanted to get my mom out to see the color but it was touch and go as to whether we could because she had another set-back with her eyes and was extremely light sensitive. Luckily she was able to go - fortified with heavy black glasses and a big hat. She loves the colors as much as I do and I think it cheered her immensely. The dogs enjoyed it immensely as well - nothing better then going on old dirt road with your head out the window and occasionally stopping for little meanders and walks.

Ephemeral Glory

After too many 10 hour work days on my feet it's glorious to take my break out on my bike and see this.

Fall Colors

There are some mighty fine displays of color going on right now. I love fall, love kicking my feet through fallen leaves and the raspy sounds they make as they fly by. I love the intensity of color and watch it as if I will never see color again. I love the winds that rastle by in gusts - more fickle and tempermental then other times of year. I love the harvest the preparations for the winter, the first dustings of snow, the crispness of the air, and the slowing down of activities after the frenetic pace of summer.

Plums

Like our apricots they're rather small in comparison to what you'd find at the market - but they have the richest flavor and I wouldn't trade them for anything. At what point in time did humans decide that looks were more important in fruit then taste?

Pears

And now the later fruits of summer begin...the pears & plums and the first of the apples.

Bears

Today was a long morning at work. I took my lunch break several hours too late and went for a much needed bicycle ride. At first I was pedaling furiously, lost in the thunder clouds in my own mind, taking no notice of the lovely autumn day, the wind, and the colors on the hillside when I went around a bend and there, just a few feet off the road sat a beautiful black bear munching on service berries. Suddenly everything was restored in the world and the rest of my ride I could feel the thunder clouds in my head slipping away even as they gathered on the horizon of the land.

First Frost & Canning

This weekend's canning projects: tomatoes, peaches, and bread & butter pickles.

We've had our first frost and it's been getting rather cool at night so we've had to cover up the precious vegetables (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, summer squash) with old sheets. We're a little early for Halloween but they make fantastic ghosts under the full moon.

Happy Equinox!

Today is the Equinox, for me the Autumnal Equinox. Today, every part of the world experiences exactly the same amount of daylight and darkness. For the northern hemisphere it marks the slide towards winter, for the southern hemisphere the slide towards summer. Every part of this earth receives the same amount of daylight in a year but depending on your latitude it will be distributed very differently.


Living in the far north I am very aware of how light plays a huge role into my perceptions and memories of the seasons. In the fall the light is changing rapidly, the sun is lower on the horizon, it often acts like a brilliant spotlight, lighting up the landscape as if it were an actor on a stage. The colors, which are bright and many at this time of year, are vibrant under this light as if they were powered from within, and in some way they are, they are the release of all the stored energy that the plants got from the sunlight all summer long. We first see the stars again, darkness comes as a surprise and we have to relearn how to navigate in it, the northern lights start appearing again in all their cloaked majesty.


In winter the light is muted and gentle. This light is very hard to capture by photograph or even by painting. There are thousands of shades of grey, of velvet, of black and purple and pink and white. The only item of color is the dark green of the evergreen trees but even these turn dark in shades of black in the light. The sun barely comes over the horizon before circling and coming back down. It is a time of year for fabulous, long sunrises & sunsets. It is the time of year for stargazing. For skiing or ice skating on a frozen lake solely by the reflection of the moon off the snowy landscape. It is a time of year to watch the breath-taking northern lights that dance and hover and wisp across the landscape more surreal and more amazing then is describable. And everything glitters with ice crystals and ice and the reflection of what sun there is off their surfaces. It is beautiful, it is cold.



Spring brings color to the landscapes. The stems of the willow bushes and the birches turn red with the swelling of sap, the spruce trees start to gain in green as the daylight grows stronger and the sun starts to register on the UV scale again. The sun gets higher in the sky, there is that day when you can actually feel heat from the sunlight and you know that spring is really here. There is lots of great skiing, robin egg blue skies, the northern lights are still out and your pulse quickens as the daylight increases and it gets easier to get out of bed in the morning. At the very tale end of spring the leaves burst forth - here in the north they do so very suddenly, almost overnight. Break-up occurs, large blocks of ice race down the rivers, the nose can smell the earth & the sea again, there is flooding and mud and shiny vivid green leaves, all in the blink of an eye.


And then summer comes, the sun is high in the sky and the darkness fades as do the stars and the northern lights but one can be out and active at any time of day without your headlamp without worrying about when darkness will fall. There are no more sunrises or sunsets, not that one would notice anyway. everything and everyone is busy, this season is short and there is much to do before the colder, darker months return. Light is beautiful, holiday light, the kind of light you associate with good memories and warmth and laziness. There is color from the vegetation & the flowers & the ocean & the sky. And you bathe in it, knowing it will soon be gone.

Happy Equinox!

Autumn Colors Train

This weekend a friend and I took advantage of a discount offer for locals to take the Alaskan railroad north and then south again. It was a wonderful opportunity to gawk at the scenery and breathe in all of those vibrant colors of fall that come and go so quickly. The fact that it was blowing 40mph outside made the comfort of the train that much more cozy.

I have to admit, I sometimes feel like Fredrick Mouse (who stars in the children's book Fredrick by Leo Leonni). Fredrick goes around trying to store up color for the dark winter months much to the despair of his food collecting companions but when they run out of food in mid-winter it is his recollections of colors and smells that distracts them from their hungry bellies. Of course, I store food too but sometimes I feel like I am trying to drink up all of the colors around me and imbibe them in the fiber of my being to keep me warm when the days are long and dark. Look at the light on those grasses!

In case you are wondering why there are all these dead trees in the picture above I shall explain their existence. These trees died in the great Alaskan earthquake of 1964 when the ground subsided over 10 feet in only a few short minutes causing an inundation of salt water to kill trees all along Alaska's shoreline and to simultaneously preserve them by filling them with salt & preventing rot.