Thirty-five degrees at dawn this morning, which means it likely hit the freezing mark an hour or two earlier. Today is perhaps the last hot day we will have this year; the forecast says rain and much cooler daytime highs, beginning tomorrow.
The calendar reminds us that this is the week of the autumnal equinox, albeit still two days off, perhaps the latest I have ever seen it. On that day, the mainstream world will catch up and catch on to that which the actual world, in this place, at least, has known for weeks: that autumn is already here.
Which means that winter cannot be far behind.
It seems a good time to appreciate the changes in the air, highlighted by the changes in the light itself, while much of the landscape yet remains green. Parts of the mountains, of course, remain green year-round, even when wrapped in the snows’ white blanket; their everyday garb consists of piñon and juniper and spruce, old growth and new life, and they wear their colors faithfully even in winter. But three or four days ago, the aspen line appeared on Pueblo Peak (what local non-Natives mistakenly call Taos Mountain, a nonexistent place and name). It begins as a small swatch of near-chartreuse, faint warm yellow underlighting the fading green, but it soon spreads until a swatch becomes a swath, a patch becomes a whole line of demarcation down the side of the peak. As of yesterday, it was fully a line, its own bright gold trail that will be amber in a few more days.
Down here at the lower elevations (“lower” meaning “7,500 feet,” in this place where we live), much of the foliage is amber already, some having early crossed the threshold to russet and brown. Across the road, the cottonwoods that line the river trade old cloaks for new seemingly daily, growing brighter and showier with each change, as though competing with Father Sun himself.
In a matter of days, nearly every line of cottonwoods in the county will glow like honey in the afternoon light. That is, if we do not get too hard a freeze, for too long, and if the rain doesn’t turn to something colder. Already, this morning’s bright turquoise skies have shrouded themselves in gentle grayish-white, the shade of a dove’s softly-feathered wing. Darker clouds appear to lie just beyond, and it may be that as they move in, they extinguish the brightest rays of the sun’s gaze for the remainder of the day and more.
Still, rainy interlude or no, the light will return soon enough, at sharper angles and in clearer air that turns the whole world amber and gold. It is a richness no gemstone can match, a shine to which no precious metal can compare, one that turns the dust of the air to ten thousand tiny diamonds dancing on nothingness.
It is a thing of magic, of mystery, of a world beyond our perception or comprehension, one that hints at those worlds in the shadows it draws upon the earth, charting a map for us to navigate as we prepare for the cold months to come. The light is Father Sun’s final gift to us, in trade for our labor in the dark of winter when he needs our help to sing him on his daily journey across the sky: a task that begins only two days hence, when the light’s angle grows yet longer and its arc ever shorter, until half of each day is dark.
Until then, we should revel in the light.
~ Aji
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