Autumn is drawing to a close. While the snow isn't on the ground yet, the trees have nearly all lost their leaves. Walking through Beaver Creek has a different charm now. Instead of a sea of yellow aspens on the hillsides there are barren branches and evergreens... it's amazing, nonetheless. While you walk all of those fallen yellow leaves pad your feet or, on a breezy day, float around you like so many yellow snowflakes. We don't get the reds here, like in the north east. We just get varying shades of yellow and sometimes you'll catch sight of some tree that wound up with brilliant oranges speckled through its golden branches. When I first moved here I thought I loved spring the best. The greens, after all, are what I missed most while I lived in the desert. Then summer would roll in so fast, and the bright, fresh green of the spring time would fade into the colors of summer. Softer, muted shades. The fall captures me, though. The air turning crisp... bringing out my cardigans and sweaters. The taste of pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks, the smell of apple pie and cinnamon. I love the way the clouds sit low over the mountains and create pockets of mist in the valleys. The water is icy cold now, in the rivers and ponds... and still you see ducks floating around while the steam rises from the water in the morning, giving it the odd appearance of ducks floating in natural hot-tubs. Here the autumn makes the air buzz in preparation for winter. Everyone is talking about the coming season because, no matter how many seasons there are here, there are really only two. I think that autumn, like it was in my childhood, is my favorite season.

I'm baking an apple pie this weekend. And pumpkin spice cookies, I think.

And now... POETRY!

Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath!
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, mid bowers and brooks.
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

- william cullen bryant