Fool's Gold

By Greg
-An attempt to catch up on activities from this past autumn-

There is a golden rule. It's not a hard and fast rule. But as a rule, autumn is a golden season in these parts.

Some of the gold comes in the form of leaves turning their seasonal gold and yellow. Most of the gold comes from the light. The shorter days and the angle of the sun brings a certain clarity and color to the local scenery. The crisp air inspires an intensity, an urgency, perhaps, as the corner of the colder season looms ahead.

We responded. With urgency, perhaps. Feverishly, perhaps. We got outside to slide through honey light on rough trails. We poured through the pools of warm color that showered from trees filled with changing leaves. We were drawn to late-season blossoms. To kaleidoscopic displays of rock, dirt, leaf, sky. To riverbanks and creek-sides re-drawn with golden borders. To hidden canyons. Sharp-edged mesas. Fading gardens. Seeking...

Gold. From gaudy to secret. Subtle to gleaming. Rare to generous. We filled our coffers with warmth and light. Stocking against the coming season of blues and whites and greys. Fearing that the season would change. That all our saving would fade into cold. Into winter. Into a more crystal treasure.

This quest for gold is a fools errand, perhaps. A vanity. For not all that glitters… And no amount of gathering, in memory or photograph, can capture those long moments. Can save them. Except as artifice and falsehood and shifting shadow. What is here one day may be gone tomorrow.

Perhaps the rule, then, is to be out there. Amid the gold. To spend time with eyes wide. With alert skin. With nostrils flared. Ears attuned. Awake to changing light. To warm air and chill stone. To the scent of dust and leaves and water. To clouds and ravens moving through open skies. To the clarity of water moving over desert rock. To the applause of golden leaves lingering on branches soon to be bare. Soon to be frosted.

If we apply another Golden Rule. A rule more known and certainly more virtuous. Then this: We would have others inspire us. As many have and many continue to do. And thus would hope that something here inspires.