Take your time, Autumn

Now autumn comes in a rush, she's behind schedule letting the warmth of summer linger through the first days of November, but as soon as she got to work on the morning of the fifth, she veiled the sun and dumped ten thousand colors into the woods.

This past Sunday we drove out to see the cousins on Long Island and enjoyed, even in the dimming light of the late afternoon, the golden yellows, the oranges, the splashes of red. The cousins told us they wouldn't be done raking up Ms Autumn's wonderful work until the next to the last week of the year. Autumn's beauty depends a great deal, not on your beholding it, but whether you are a gawker leaf peeper or a raker pilemaker.

The cousins are travelers, not tourists. I know a lot of people claim not to be tourists but who are, the cousins go and do more than see places. They have what used to be called experiences. They went to Machu Picchu last summer, found themselves a guide, convinced him that they didn't want the usual two hour tourista lunch at the huge restaurante. He was very happy to set them out a picnic on the grassy edge of a farmer's field halfway up the mountains to ruins. Set before them on colorful blankets was an Peruvian meal prepared by the guide's wife that morning- chewy bread stuffed with a tuna mixture and other tasty munchies. There was a clear sky, unusual for that area which gets enveloped by mists constantly and the luncheon group piqued the curiosity of some of the local wild black pigs who came wandering out of the field to have a looksee at what was what. I know that was a nice moment to have in one's life.

If we are to have any nice moments in this fall we had better hurry. Thursday looks like the last of the 60's (the temperatures, not the decade - it's really gone.) I'm going on a long run that morning while the big chicken roasts and I'm going to try to find some of those red splashes in the park. The brothers of some of Winter's winds have already started to hike down this way from Canada. In ten days they will have blown away Ms. Autumn's watercolor work and left us with bare branches trying to scratch the sun's eye out as he passes low in the sky.