On first looking out the window yesterday morning, I saw that so many leaves had fallen the day before that each tree now had color at its crown and stood in pool of color as well. In between these areas of concentrated brightness, bits of color filled the air, drifting from branches to ground. Every leaf was backlit, as if it carried its own light source.
Out for a walk later, I turned the corner at the end of the block and encountered a seeming wall of backlit yellow maple leaves. It cast so much golden light that the glare of it limited visibility. I nearly bumped into a woman walking the other direction she, as she was backlit. We both laughed and continued on our way.
In Sugarbush Woods, the trail was similarly bright, with one particular beam of sunshine highlighting a hawk perched next to the trail. Oddly, the bird didn’t startle as, step after furtive step, I closed in on it, trying to get a good look before it took off. It stayed where it was until I got close enough to notice a certain lack of symmetry. Because it was a branch balanced on a sapling stump, not a bird at all. Blame it on backlighting.
A maple leaf sat on the railing of the pedestrian bridge at Traver, one side of the leaf high and curling like a cresting wave. I blew the leaf off the railing and it wafted down to the creek, one side still high, whereupon it went sailing off upstream, golden wanderer that it was, for one more adventure.
The number of leaves in the air at any given time increased yesterday afternoon, as the wind suddenly picked up. They no longer looked like they had released their holds of their own volition. Now they looked like they were being pulled off. And they didn’t drift, they flew. The sky got abruptly darker, and my sweetheart asked me if it was raining yet. Nope.
The next time he asked, something had changed. Although you couldn’t see individual raindrops, you could see which individual leaves they struck. It was like watching a player piano, keys being depressed with no fingers to play them. It never rained hard, and it didn’t rain long, but it rained beautifully.
We had to make another early-morning hospital run this week, this one even earlier than the first. The hour certainly improved the traffic situation—there wasn’t any—but getting up quite that early comes with an important side effect. It scrambles your brains.
At first, you just figure you’re tired. You stay awake and alert as long as you need to, figuring you’ll nap later and all will be well. You do nap later and find, when you wake, that you slept for hours, longer than the hours of sleep you lost by getting up at o-dark-thirty. One of our party slept for seven hours.
And, despite having had the nap, you find that you still have, in Garrison Keillor’s words, cornflakes for brains. Choosing a TV channel to watch is beyond your capacity, and it doesn’t matter anyway because whatever’s on, you sleep through it.
Maybe the child we saw on our way home from the hospital was sleep deprived. He was shaking apples down from a scrawny apple tree. While standing under it. Apples were falling directly on him and, not only did he not pick them up from the ground, but he kept doing whatever it was he was doing on his phone. Sometimes you just don’t know how the story turns out.
Around our neighborhood, Halloween decorations have pretty much reached their peak. Late additions include a helmeted, adult-sized skeleton riding a tot’s push bike. The skeleton of a two-headed dog. And a whole-yard display.
Three skeletons with pumpkin heads take pride of place in that one. The largest of the three sits with its outstretched arms around two much-smaller ones, and they’re all sitting in a kiddie swimming pool. You can tell they’re happy to be there together by their smiling jack-o-lantern faces.
Elsewhere in the yard, it’s not clear how a fourth skeleton feels about being there. It’s a fish in a second kiddie pool, and that fish has enormous teeth. It could compete with Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf. Also, whatever it means when a fish has already assumed skeletal form, it’s swimming belly up.
Children are roaming the neighborhood Halloween costumes. There was only half a day of school today. The kids are as eager for Halloween to come as the adults are eager for next Tuesday’s election to come and go.
30 October 2026