The Very Day I Wait For

AUTUMN

by Emily Dickinson

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.

Today is the tenth day of October, we've shared it with the first snow of the season. The wind started stiffly blowing early in the morning, followed by the snow which came in an assortment of forms and volume. Large, quarter-sized flakes, hard balls of corn-snow, at times horizontal blankets, tiny, floating crystalline-like bits that clung to the branches of the trees and grasses in the fields and glistened when the sun shone through the low-hung gray clouds (enlarge the pictures of the birches and you'll see what I mean) - all served to accumulate and leave a clean white ground covering that Robert Frost would have been more than pleased with.

It is this very day I wait for all year - this remarkable change in season day - from here on there'll be no question: we're on the cusp of winter. With that in mind David and I loaded a few dogs into the car - our destination wasn't mapped out - we let the roads take us where they would. We ended up at a bridge - we'd been there once before. Following the Sturgeon River Road we came to "THE BRIDGE" - it seems to lead only to a red farm house as it spans the Sturgeon River. We didn't cross it but someday I will and investigate the possibilty that the road just might reduce to a wee-small two track beyond the red farm house - and follow along the river bank.