Piles of Falling Leaves

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute?  We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.  Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not?" ~ Henry David Thoreau

It's amazing where one will find their thoughts if they truly allow their mind to freely wander. It's funny and peculiar that very few things in life, perhaps only a handful but some of the best of things, don't depend on anything of your will or persistence. They are best left to be what it was they were always drifting towards, just as leaves once on trees now fluttering and floating in shades of new color. There is a tense excitement to the uncertainty in the unknown moments of these things, an agitated but serene patience to what has yet to come. And it's not that you expect anything of it, or even that you are set in desire, but more so that there is some slight glimmer of hope in the what-if that catches your eye like the rays of sun on those falling leaves. Yet, you're not searching or grasping for anything. As long as you genuinely let the wind carry you in those moments it's bound to end up at that something beautiful.

That sort of lost in the moment, striding down a mountain, beautiful day, first kiss energy. Inch of Dust by Future Islands

Early Fall

Let your walks now be a little more adventurous; ascend the hills. If, about the last of October, you ascend any hill in the outskirts of our town, and probably yours, and look over the forest, you may see - well, what I have endeavored to describe. All this you surely 'will' see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, - if you 'look' for it. Otherwise, regular and universal as this phenomenon is, whether you stand on the hilltop or in the hollow, you will think for threescore years and ten that all the wood is, at this season, sere and brown. Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them; for there is no power to see in the eye itself, any more than in any other jelly. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of Nature are for this reason concealed from us all our lives. The gardener sees only the gardener's garden. Here, too, as in political economy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature does not cast pearls before swine. There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, - not a grain more. ~ Henry David Thoreau (Autumnal Tints)


The AT is at its best in the fall, how anyone chooses to thru-hike it in the middle of the summer rather than sooner or later is beyond me; the colors, the wind drifting leaves as they fall to their resting places, the cooler nights, clearer skies, stiffening breeze. They don't compare to a summer in the Sierra, but they allow the common man a simple accessible escape, serving as a gateway to new places and a love for the outdoors.

Annapolis Rocks, view south

Annapolis Rocks, view south

Black Rocks, view northwest

Black Rocks, view west, peering over the edge at the boulder field below

All There Is by Gregory Alan Isakov. Very fitting to the season.