The season Autumn has forever captivated me. As a boy, I played amongst the leaves and drank the sweet scent of wetted Aspen leaves, slick upon the quiet floor of the Absarokas. As a man, I walk these woods with my lovely girl beneath a cathedral of gold. She too, like the leaves, changed my life and altered my seasons. Like she, who brought me out of the coldest winters of my life, these rhythmic seasons have pulsated here in the wilderness over the course of millenniums.
Fall is often viewed as a harbinger of death, as life fades from the forest. Ever shorter days, offering less sunlight, and cooler temperatures, trigger the leaves to stop their energy yielding process of photosynthesis. The chlorophyll breaks down, the green vanishes, revealing yellow to orange colors, showcasing a vibrant forest on fire and a canopy of gold.
This conclusion to each year is a grand finally exploding with the brightest hues. The spectrum of Autumn may represent fading life, however with this brightest death, followed by the darkness of deadly winter is made fresh by the burst of a renewed season of life - spring.
Without this death, without this waning of growth, void of this pause, this time of respite and reflection there would be nothing new. Without fall, there would be no scattering of seed, no blossoming wildflower or sweetest nectar for the bee.
With pine nuts gathered by denizens of trees, and dens burrowed by hibernating bear, the wild animals prepare to sleep among towering and silent sentinels of old growth.
It is here, the forest goes to sleep.
