November View from Skytop: Mist and Colors

The precipitation overnight started as rain, pitched in a little bit of snow just for fun, and then turned back to plain rain by the morning hours for our work commute.

When I saw the mist rising over Skytop, my hands acted of their own accord: they turned the wheel left, and so it was that I drove up the hill to check out the view at Skytop, looking out over the beautiful rolling hills of central Pennsylvania.

I got out of my car with my camera, glad it wasn't raining anymore. I could see the colors, still on the far hills. The leaves are still pretty, but they are falling now. In some places, the colors are already gone. But not here. Mist was playing lovely games among those hills, dancing upon them: little clouds of pure sky-light.

There is something about November that makes me wistful. I love the foliage show, and I hate it when it ends. Yet one of the things I enjoy photographing almost more than anything is bare trees in late fall and winter.

It is the time of the drawing down to darkness, but I am not, and never have been, afraid of the dark. A thing that November brings us to is the realization that every beautiful thing must come to an end.

But, of course, the trees will grow leaves again in spring, and the cycle will begin anew. There is no true ending of things; it is an illusion. There is just the pause, followed by transition and transformation.

So enjoy the November pause. Take a deep breath. Savor the drawing down. It has its own special quiet beauty, well worth celebrating. Like the last of the colors, and the mist dancing upon the far hills, light as air, pretty as a picture. Done too soon.

How about a slightly melancholy John Mellencamp tune for this scene? Here is John, with Minutes to Memories, one of my favorites from the 1985 Scarecrow album. Every song on it is good.