Bright Zephyr

Despite going on a TAASC trip this weekend and then leaving on Monday afternoon for a bit of a climbing trip, I have not been hunkering down to a computer this week.

This is not to say that I haven't been doing work (or at least that the work won't be done by the time I leave); however, life has been much more full and roundly bright this week. The leaves really are the most spectacular yellows, reds, and oranges, and against the warm blue sky they look almost fake. These primary and secondary colors could be on superhero uniforms, if they wanted.

At one point today, a gust blew small yellow leaves in a flurry as if they were canaries that flew like bats. Or a yellow ticker-tape parade. Or a flutter of leaves.

Later, I saw a similar image when my young running buddy threw a handful of maple seeds and dried pine needles into the air. Two ticker-tape parades in one day!

Taking a break from running, we took a big step up onto a large fallen tree, and walked its spine towards the exposed root ball and empty hole. We sat for a while and talked about tree identification. I know a few basic ones (and most of them by leaves instead of bark), but I had to smile when he asked the same question that I was going to ask him: "Hey, what's your favorite tree?" It was as if nature took a break from its scientific day job and became our close friend or something for which we could have a preference.

I said aspens and maples. He said maples and oaks, but that if he lived in Canada, it would definitely be maples because of their maple syrup.

Life has been filling me up.