Living enfolded within nature, I cut my season’s, pizza-like, into manageable, daily, slices of color. A grey day on Wednesday, sunny beige on Thursday, gentle and calming mauve on Friday. Dropping through the branches of the oak tree a sunbeam gently prods Smokey, our garden dragon peering out from his small rock cave. I stopped and gave him a pat on his worn concrete head. While some people seek God in a book or in a building, I believe I’m touched as he touches all his creations: gently prodding us to just hold to our best, to bend when the burden proves heavy, and to renew with each season. 

Looking for variations in light is second nature to me. I seek it in the underbrush and find it unexpectedly in a fern frond lit from below during a sunset. I’ve found sunlight temporarily imprisoned within opalescent beads strung to needles of a white pine after a gentle rain.  I was there when the rising sun turned an ordinary frosted leaf into a blood-red shield for the armory of the wee forest people. Light is a reverse chameleon, changing the environment instead of matching the scenery.

Aspens’ pay their dividends in late September, showering the earth with shimmering golden coins. In the marsh in the elbow of the Fox River,Tamaracks blaze bright yellow-orange candles, flaming against an azure October sky. In autumn, sunlight strengthens on the horizontal and landscapes clash beneath deep blue or rainy day drab and dreary gray.

Reds’ become umber, burgundy, and scarlet. Yellows’ turn to alloys, becoming gold and brass and copper. The colors of a languishing landscape define dimension. It’s like looking through binoculars; one flattened layer succeeds another; they appear lined up like a cardboard diorama with each successive layer growing smaller unto the horizon.

With winter coming, evening tugs down the shortened length of day. Faint glimmers’ of far-off galaxies sparkle, sending pale grey-blue notes to glitter on December’s coming snows. Between areas of light pollution, especially by moonlight, the frosted landscape becomes my grand idea of nature’s dining table. Set for special guests only, silver and edges of cut-crystal will gleam across the candle-lit prairie. I’ll pause and give thanks for the invitation to feast my eyes, while awaiting another year of autumn leaves.