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.