The colors are starting. It’s finally Fall.

My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer — a line from one of the Psalms that’s been in my head. But the cooler it gets the more like myself I feel, and the more I feel at home.

So I went for a walk, aiming for Compass Harbor, but I passed it and kept on, following the around-trail all the way. It wasn’t long, a mile or two, and it was quiet, and the fog made everything seem close and safe.

I realized that I did feel safer in the woods than I do in town. I think it’s because I’ve had to be available at every moment to answer any question or help with any small thing in the shop, and I have to guess what’s needed and am afraid at the end of the day that it hasn’t been enough. What if it hasn’t been enough?

But in the woods it’s not about me. In the woods it’s simple. And I know what the sounds are. And I feel that things are growing.

And the colors, the ones that are starting to come through: as I walked I thought about how much work the trees have had to do throughout the summer to produce them — all the rains they’ve had to drink up and all the sun they’ve had to process and just how much has to be done for the colors at the end of the season. And I wondered if the trees could talk if they’d have told me, Look, look — this is what it was all for. This is what it was for.

I do feel a bit of that too… All the summer, all the noise and the people and the shop and so many things to process and all the storms to weather, the friends who came and went and so much change and secret tears and the learning and chores and day-to-day things… And now…

Now the colors are starting and it’s finally Fall. And I’m just starting to see, in the parts of life that are drawing to a close, just how beautiful some of them are, and I imagine those parts of life saying to me, Look, look…

I think when it’s quiet I will see. And I do see.