The recent trip north to Pennsylvania gave us a fall preview. The creeks were colder, the air more crisp, and the walnut trees were freshly bare next to sweet red maples. Morning frosts lifted slowly into late morning steam. The hunter’s moon lit the nightfields full of deer. It was vacation time and all things conspired to give us a good one. Each day the brilliant evidence of the changing seasons replaced my imagination, for I was out of doors more than in: sensing more than thinking. My brain lay fallow, nourished by the faint whistle of a white-throated sparrow and a long view across the golden, rusty hills.
