Musings: On the editor's mind

Last week’s rains and the weekend’s winds knocked the last of this year’s leaves off area trees. Broadleaf or conifer needle, all fell like the rain that battered them to the ground.

Just like that, autumn’s leaves are gone. The variety of colored puddles, reflecting their tree crowns above, were already pretty much raked, blown, ground and sucked up by humans bringing order to their yards.

The leaf shadows are now only a memory, a journal entry, poem fragment or watercolor sketch, if captured in some physical form. Many a leaf will be captured by gardeners and homeowners, headed for their compost piles, where they will come up as rose or radish in a new year.

Now, there is a comfort to the quiet, the grayness and the mist hanging low, skirting the mountains on the horizons.

The clouds have taken on the look and coloring of battleship gray, the sun is going to stay low on the horizon for another eight weeks and even when the skies are blue, the short days chase the color out of them before long.

Alas, being past the middle of the fall season means winter is mere weeks away. Last year saw unusual levels of snow and cold, another turn of the cycle.

Who knows what is in store for us, if the Farmer’s Almanac or aches in our bones are accurate predictors of the coming year.

The rains and overcast this fall have been like the days of old. But a couple of months of raining like it used to is no predictor of next week or the next season, for weather or anything else.

Whether we pray for rain or for it to cease, for a break in the clouds and sunshine, for the end of a drought or a breeze to freshen, we seek change in conditions that break the monochrome monotony.