The stars overhead are pinpricks in encompassing, velvet vastness. Tiny punctures in the dome of the world. So distant and cold and lonely. So…forever. Somewhere they are raging, burning – a mess of light and temperature. Here is so far off from there. Infinitesimal, barely substantial, barely real. Silver raindrops, frozen, detached, and patterned, caught before they fell. The trees in the darkness are just shapes and shadows. The harbors of animals and the givers of life, tall and watchful. The mountains, white-peaked and encircling, immense and jagged, silhouetted in the twilight. The field stretching out into the shade of the night, frosty grasses swinging in the bitter morning. The night is tinted with blue and purple in its gloom, wide and gaping. The wind rustles in the leaves, turned copper-gold.
Then in a one glorious instant, fire ignites the sky. Pinks, oranges, and red run together in the lightening sky in brilliance. And the autumn dawn comes; the blue, cold mountains are softened even as they appear from the dark. Frost tinges the grasses. The trees, rocking to and fro with the zephyrs of the north, are mostly naked but for the evergreens, tall and steadfast, sturdy like the comprehension of forever.
In this moment of miracles, when the dark and light collide, everything is crisp and perfect, surreal and wonderful. A portrait of a peaceful and silent place. Looking out the big glass window in the early morning, thoughts come to me and pass as the clock ticks. So there arises to me the memory of a poem by a celebrated writer:
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost is correct. The gold begins to run away like swift water and the special light fades. The sun is up. The day begins.
It is autumn in Kenny Lake, Alaska, now. Snow will come drifting down soon and the world will sleep beneath a white blanket until spring blossoms out again
Then in a one glorious instant, fire ignites the sky. Pinks, oranges, and red run together in the lightening sky in brilliance. And the autumn dawn comes; the blue, cold mountains are softened even as they appear from the dark. Frost tinges the grasses. The trees, rocking to and fro with the zephyrs of the north, are mostly naked but for the evergreens, tall and steadfast, sturdy like the comprehension of forever.
In this moment of miracles, when the dark and light collide, everything is crisp and perfect, surreal and wonderful. A portrait of a peaceful and silent place. Looking out the big glass window in the early morning, thoughts come to me and pass as the clock ticks. So there arises to me the memory of a poem by a celebrated writer:
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost is correct. The gold begins to run away like swift water and the special light fades. The sun is up. The day begins.
It is autumn in Kenny Lake, Alaska, now. Snow will come drifting down soon and the world will sleep beneath a white blanket until spring blossoms out again