FALL CALL
Friday, September 10, 2021
I rounded a corner to confront the risen sun, its bright glare defeated by the gray …
I’m sure the sun was unchanged, but its image was suddenly a burnt orange ball of surreal – as if it had been painted on a gray wall.
On days when work drifts deep into the night followed by early rising as yesterday was again, it is easy to hibernate, avoid contacts and context.
Yesterday was, again, one of those recently too familiar smoke-gray sky mornings. My morning walk felt like a walk in virtual reality – another hot day, but the hot/dry August air in recent weeks has been replaced by an early morning damp windy nostril stimulating chill as a reminder that cold winds from the north will resume soon.
Those smoke-tinted sky days are no longer a blanket of gray haze, and now it’s time for falling yellow leaves – but otherwise a regular morning of dog walkers and car traffic.
The fresh air of autumn mornings – deer sightings in the neighbourhood, them munching crabapples and berries in front yards, and young geese testing their wings in small squadrons in preparation for their trip south – when crisp blue skies and the absence of smoke let us breathe deeply.
Yes, it’s fall y’all.