The Mysterious Autumn

   This is the Autumn that was different than any other. Usually the days gradually turn cooler, the air more brisk, with a cleanliness that wipes away any of the humidity that lingers in late Summer into Autumn, with the transition a gradual one.

October Sunset

   However this year, it was mild to the point of having the air conditioner on in the evenings, some strange extension to Summer days, and yet all the while the Sun was still waning, and daylight receeding. I found myself in late October going to the ocean shores with just long sleeves, enjoying long treks up and down the shoreline, watching surfers in their devotion to the wind and waves from the tropical storms and hurricane remnants that washed through the area.
   And the leaves did not even turn color until the beginning of November. Leaves were starting to fall off the trees because they were brown or dying from the slight chill on some nights. Upstate further north there was little color to speak of, that glorious testament of color from nature that is usually present. Now suddenly in almost mid November the leaves are turning and coming down, but many of the trees were stripped of leaves in the last storm that was nearly hurricane force winds.
   The early dark nights of Autumn are here and so we wait until the Sun returns, and a new year, and new cycle begins. Living a natural life, we seek to be flexible to nature and its cycles, the ebb and flow, no matter how strange it appears.

Maery