Setting Sail Upon a Golden Sea

It was Sunday afternoon, and the sun started to break through the clouds just as my husband and I left our house to go for a hike along the Little Juniata River, not far from Tyrone. We encountered stands of yellow trees, unexpectedly still wrapped in the colorful cloaks of autumn.

The Little Juniata River joins up with the Frankstown Branch to become the Juniata River, which I consider to be my family river, as it is the only river to run through Juniata County, where I grew up. After that, its waters become part of the mighty Susquehanna, which drains nearly half of the great state of Pennsylvania before becoming one with the ocean at the Chesapeake Bay.

It was a perfect, sunny November afternoon that felt like what we as little children might have called "Indian summer." It was an autumn story, but with pages lifted from summer's play book. Everywhere I looked, leaves were writing poems. They were waving on the branches, drifting gently through the air, and - finally - setting sail for the ocean upon these golden seas.

The soundtrack: Styx, Come Sail Away.