A Walk in the Pennsylvania Woods, Late September

When I returned from my beach vacation early this week, I found the belles of our central Pennsylvania woods beginning to put on their prettiest dresses for the best dance of all. I'm talking about fall foliage, about the change in leaf color that follows summer's gentle drift into fall.

If you catch the autumn foliage in Pennsylvania at full swing, even once, you will never, ever want to leave here. You will be smitten, doomed perhaps to spend your life like me, wandering through the woods happy as some eternal fool. (I've been accused of worse.)

The problem is that when it gets like this, you won't want to be anywhere else BUT in the woods. What about work? Obligations? Real life? I leave them all behind and go walk in the Pennsylvania woods in autumn.

The song: The Moody Blues, Forever Autumn.