Falling leaves

Yesterday I went to a nearby nature sanctuary that has a few woodland trails. We’ve had a drought here this year, something that seems far more common in recent years than when I was a kid, and so instead of a riot of reds and yellows the trees were various shades of reddish and yellowish brown, or green turning to brown, or already bare.  it was a windy day, and brown and yellow leaves showered down.  As I was watching this at one point I noticed three leaves, connected to each other, that seemed to have achieved some kind of leafy aerodynamic ideal; as other leaves were falling steadily downward this particular trio appeared to hover for a bit, even drifting upwards, before gliding down in lazy swoops and whorls and finally coming to rest.

The place also has a number of meadow trails, which are nice because it’s in the middle of rolling fields and farmland, so that from one hill in particular you can look around and see the surrounding hills, some with a distant house or barn peeking out of some trees, others with fields and fences or little patches of woods, autumnal browns against the blue of the October sky.