Late Summer Thoughts

 Elizabeth, your pictures tonight look like they're from a different section of the field. In the first photo, the view looks elevated, so maybe you are on top of a hill. Maybe that's the back end of the woods in the distance? And the spot in your second photo, with the flowering shrubs, is beautiful. It looks like a very large open space, so nice and green. As I mentioned in my note, I too love late Summer, and I love the month of September (except when it meant Back to School, haha), because - out here at least - we get some of the hottest days of the year, which I love of course. But you also get that change of light as we head into Fall, and you begin to anticipate Halloween season......

But it really goes deeper than that, and it's something I'd have to really think about before trying to identify it. The Heart of Summer is easy to identify : July 4th, blazing sun, booming fireworks, going to the beach or the lake, cookouts and campfires.......that's the image, anyway. For us artistic types, we may not always go to the beach or the campfire; we tend to pursue the same things all year round, creative things that come from within as opposed to just partying with the crowd. But it's the feeling in the air that I'm talking about, and when it's Fourth of July, that feeling is easy to put your finger on, because everything is bright and colorful, and the days are long, and the feeling is Fun in the Sun. 

But when Summer begins to ebb, that's a harder one to spell out. Stephen King uses late Summer as a setting in many of his books, and he can set the scene better than I, not just in a horror context, but in the way it acts as an undercurrent in the human psyche.

Here in the Valley, I also love to take pictures at this time, because that's when I get some of my best Summer Colors, as I call them, which out here are mostly golden browns and rust red, because everything is dried out. We only get green hills for a few weeks in Spring, but I do love my late Summer Colors. The only problem this year is these doggone fires. We've had this pall of smoke hanging overhead for a week now, and I start getting a headache if I'm outside for too long, so I can't go on a hike. Hopefully it will clear soon. It sure was awesome to see the vulture last week, so I can't wait to get back out there for whatever surprises are in store.

I think it's all psychic, what Nature has to show us, besides the visual aspect. It's something that goes incredibly deep inside of us, because this is our home, this planet. So when we're out on the trail in late Summer, we can feel something, but it's hard to pin down if we try to articulate it. 

Without getting too cosmic, I think it has something to do with Eternal Life, because this is our home, and the processes of the Earth seem eternal, and we cannot imagine not being here.

The birds seem to know it. So do the squirrels. And they know it automatically, without thinking about it. That's why I like watching them when I'm out there. :):)

I like to continually have one foot in each world, the physical and the spiritual. And I know you do too.

I'll see you in the morning, my love. Sleep tight.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)