Forever Autumn

It was a beautiful sunny morning, and I decided to take my bike down to the park. Autumn Meadow Park is a five-minute bike ride away, mostly downhill from here. We'd driven past the day before, and I'd spotted some gorgeous orange trees. Time to go and visit again . . . and this time, get a closer look.

I wandered around the park and the couple of streets nearby (hello, Skyharbor Drive; isn't that a pretty name?), and I spotted a row of trees that I'm not sure I had really noticed before. Well, they are for sure putting on a show right now! "Glory, glory, look at US!" they seemed to cry, their colors shining out like a light, against a late October sky.

We always act as though the autumn colors are something the trees put on as their last little special fancy dancing suit in fall. But my own theory is that these are the colors of their souls. Like Superman's suit, evident only after doffing the regular plain clothes. What you wear beneath the ordinary, the everyday: their true colors, perhaps, at last revealed. "Look how beautiful I secretly was, all along!!!"

A thing that you would never know unless you lived here is how much the trees change the light when they are clad like this. On a cloudy day, they almost seem to MAKE the light; when it rains, they glow. In the half-light of dusk, the trees collaborate with the last bit of sun, the whole world covered in a golden haze.

Inside the house, even, the light shines in the pretty new shades of the trees around us. They are like some new organic strain of stained glass, surrounding our house with color, with autumn joy. The special light comes indoors to visit: a welcome guest, transformative to each space.

Oh, you can keep your celebratory springtime follies, and your sweet summer days, and your sparkly-frozen winter dreams. If you're looking for me, this is where you'll find me: right here in a land where it is forever autumn, giddy with the colors, celebrating the glory of the trees.

Our soundtrack song, as you probably had already guessed, is the Moody Blues, with Forever Autumn.