I was tempted to call this post “Goodbye to Fall” but that would not be accurate. We have weeks, maybe months, of fall ahead of us in this long slow slide to winter. Rain and wind have pretty well put out the fire of fall in Southern Maine this past week, and there are more leaves on the ground than on the trees. Still the trees will be bare a good long time before they are loaded with snow. We might even have an Indian Summer in between. So this is just goodbye to fall foliage…the brief weeks of stunning color here in New England.

Canon SX40HS at about 155mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/80th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and Vivid set in My Color.

Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.

And for the Sunday thought. Maybe is just the hang-over from a week of intense meetings and late nights, but I can feel my mind shifting out of summer gear today, settling in to the more studious mode of fall and winter, turning inward. I feel the need of a fire in the fireplace. We don’t actually have a fireplace of course, but I still feel the need to huddle down to warmth and light, inside, and think deep thoughts. The thoughts of summer are all external, bright days and doing, life so fast and vital you can barely catch it, and never catch enough. The thoughts of fall and winter are internal. The days may be as bright and as full, and I may be outside just as much, but I become more alive than the world outside. I take my life out to experience fall and winter. Summer just breaks in and overwhelms me. And I am ready for fall…ready even for winter.

In my job fall and winter are busy seasons. Over the next month I will experience fall at least 4 times more in trips to the south and west, and even at the depth of winter in New England, I will be taking brief vacations into the shallows of what passes for winter in Florida and other points south. So it is more a thing of the mind and spirit, this inward turning. But I recognize the beginnings of it today, here in Southern Maine. It might be goodbye to the flame of fall foliage, but it is hello to the mind of fall.