fall fretting

This autumn is all about the light.

I was driving along on Saturday, back and forth across town, back and forth, back and forth, relentlessly evaluating the relative intensity and beauty of this season's Fall Foliage, as is my want, and fretting in my regular way. Every year it seems to me that the year before must have been more glorious. Every year I cast my eye back and try to precisely remember the shade of each tree, as if such a thing could be remembered. I cannot remember where my list of things to do is carefully placed. I cannot remember what I intended us to have for dinner most days. I cannot remember why I came into this room. Certainly I cannot remember the color of each tree last year. And yet I can't sot from trying.

And I am completely sure that this year is settling more towards yellow and brown than red and orange. This fact cannot be avoided, certainly not when driving along that bit of parkway by the river. The only red there has been the foreign ivies growing up the trunks of more ordinary looking trees. 

I drove along all afternoon and found this to be uniformly true and shook my internal and rebellious fist at the Weather of Binghamton. Surely God has forsaken us all. Probably the end of the world is nigh. A brown fall surely foretastes a cold, bleak, brown winter. I may as well shut my curtains tight and pray for an early spring which won't come because God isn't provident and doesn't care.

So said I to myself steadily until my final trip across town, this time at 5 o'clock as the sun was settling into a warm golden glow on the edge of the trees. I was struck dumb into repentance and hope by the peculiar color of gold produced by the light. 

Sorry God.