Big Cottonwood Canyon in the Fall
This photo is from roughly two months ago, looking toward the east from the south side of Mount Raymond…. This peak is on the ridge between Millcreek Canyon to the north and Big Cottonwood Canyon to the south. On this particular Sunday, I climbed the trail in Porter Fork, rounded the back/south side of Mount Raymond, and then went through Baker’s Pass and down into Bowman Fork…which took me to about 1/4 of a mile from my starting point at the Porter Fork trail-head in Millcreek Canyon. This route around the mountain, up one fork, around the mountain, and down the other fork, is somewhere between eight and nine miles in length and has an elevation change of approximately 2,400 feet. I had been up Porter Fork a couple of times in the past, and in Bowman Fork only once, but had never taken the trail all the way around Mount Raymond…so this view was entirely new to me…and a wonderful surprise.
the orchard is empty
the orchard is empty and the fruit is all down and the trucks have driven away and left only their tire tracks in the grass and the delicate lingering fumes of their exhaust as a fine mist in the treetops, a filigree of vapor and chemical rind that leaves slowly and at the whim of the breeze. we put the ladders away, back in the barn where they will collect the seasons’ dust and cobwebs as they long for the touch of our hands and the trod of boots on their rungs in the night of the year
a quiet has returned to the place where the buzzing of bees and bird-song are the loudest sounds we hear and a fox peers tentatively from under the fence in the far west end and a man I know steps lightly on the morning stairs, down and down from the ancient painted house and into the yard as the newling morning sun peeks over the distant mountains and the crisp in yesterday’s air left in the evening breeze behind warm currents that lofted lazily into the yard and scooted the leaves yon and away. the quiet will be here for a long while and the trees will settle for their slumber and life abides and kindles a slow flame like a warm and hiding light…and the orchard is empty and the fruit is all down as we pray to our gods for a gentle winter and wet
Baptism by Fall
October, 2010…not the first in my life, but the first significant one in too many years….
Fall…Part Two and Three and Four and…
Somehow, we can’t leave the three to four inches of leaves all over the back yard…snow is coming and its melting and more snowing will turn the Fall beauty into a Spring nightmare of deep raking to get the leaf-slime out of the waking lawn…but there is nothing like the smell of raking the leaves…as odd as it sounds…so earthy and rich…and clean, too….
There’s a storm coming in…
…or so they say. And I might believe them, but only for today. I’ve been duped before, led to believe and hope and whatever then. But, it’s warm outside and the wind is blowing and the leaves are skittering about as the wind chimes are chiming and gonging as they’re singing their song. I looked outside and then walked outside as I took a break from my morning walk about the kitchen in my making of coffee and feeding the dogs and etc and etc. I looked to my favored East and above the mountains and noticed the clouds there with their morning waking and moving. I saw, too, that the sun was rising and poking through the spreading hue, as there was a sizeable space between the bottom of the clouds and the tops of the mountains and the morning sun shone through and lighted the clouds with a fiery orange and a gentle pink and a touch of Fall’s golden-yellow and then. The colors reached and bathed the bottoms of the clouds, but missed somehow the thicker and gray curls and swirls of the farthest sides. Those darkened lines defined and shaped the golden rose of the flaming clouds and kept them from drawing further across the sky. This bright morning waking of the clouds only touched the snow-topped crags beneath them, for the dark-souled mountains only stood there with their contrasting black forms and white coats that defined their draws and points…so I rushed back inside and grabbed my low-budget camera and snapped a shot of that fiery glow above the rocky peaks and nearly exclaimed in disgust at how the image captured there was so lame and bland and looked nothing like the glory of that eastern morning sky…so you only get to read my words today and not rest your eyes on the beauty that I beheld those minutes and hours or more ago.
Early Fall Close-up
Fall…a time of change and growth and putting off of the Old as we prepare to enter a season of quiet and restoration, a time when it looks as if nothing is happening, but when we are still full of life…just getting ready for whatever comes next, both the known and unknown…when we are readying ourselves for the New.
Liberty Park in Early November
Liberty Park, in Salt Lake City, has become a favorite and oft frequented place for me over the past several months. I usually walk there during my lunch-times and often go there and park under the trees when it’s raining and too wet to walk in the middle of my work-day. I have posted several pictures from the park during the past year, but none that have captured the beauty of Fall as these have…enjoy.
It’s Friday Again….
It’s Friday again, somehow, and thankfully…and I simply do not want to get started on my work-day, even though it technically started about half an hour and more ago. I’ve been looking at a photography blog that contains photos taken in Colorado, outdoor shots of people and nature, and it was so easy to stay there and not attend to the stack of papers on my desk that represent people and infections and stories and trying to be nice as I listen to their unconcern, panic, or whatever their names and phone numbers hold for me today. I marveled at the pictures of scenery and nature that so resemble the area of my new home and the beauty of Fall and her changing seasons.
As I was driving to work this morning, I couldn’t help notice the orange and yellow and pink and red of the leaves on the trees and sidewalks in our downtown and nearby residential areas. It reminded me again of the walk/hike I took at this time last year through Memory Park and City Creek Canyon. Upon further reflection, it dawned on me that I went there exactly one year ago next week, so even the stars and planets are similarly aligned, as the trees and everything were the same…as I looked again at the pictures I had taken and posted on Facebook.
The office is now waking and my co-workers are talking on their phones with their own patients and infections and the computer keys are tapping in their fast and slow paces and the piano music is still talking to my heart from my computer’s speakers and the cars and trucks pass silently and loudly on the street below our eastern-facing windows, as the boss is gone today and it’s Friday, again, and the pen feels so good in my hand as its tip scratches the paper and I can still smell the wood-smoke and feel the chill in my ears and nose as I remember my walk from last evening…as the echoes of my little one’s boisterousness rang in my ears and reverberated still with flashes and snapshot images of his silly and smiling eyes and clownish grin. So I think I’ll take him and his brother/nephew out to City Creek Canyon and see if they enjoy the colors of the falling leaves and the crisp morning air as much as I do and will…and maybe I’ll snap some beautiful photos to post here, too…of people and nature, and people, too.
