But it’s not quite here yet. We can still enjoy the light and water and the play of life all around us.
When we do get ice whipped and housebound, then the words of Annie Dillard ring true:
“It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year’s planting.
The woods are acres of sticks: I could walk to the Gulf of Mexico in a straight line. When the leaves fall, the striptease is over; things stand mute and revealed. Everywhere skies extend, vistas deepen, walls become windows, doors open.”
But for now there’s still lots to see, including waterfalls and the low late Autumn sun.
Waterfalls invigorate, as this one that graces the Shades of Death trail in Hickory Run State Park attests:
“Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our mind’s rest on a rose bud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall.” Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.
And the sun plays tricks and acts differently — but magically — as it starts turning its face away.
Rays from a wan sun sparkle on the lake at Frances Slocum State Park.
“Every winter, when the great sun has turned his face away, The earth goes down into a vale of grief, and fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables, leaving her wedding-garlands to decay — then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.” Charles Kings
