Autumn and Entropy

III The Gate

Secrets

That day, not unlike many others, I sought the rich bounties that curiosity and adventure promise. Treasures intangible are concealed within distant woodland frontiers, whose vague silhouettes rise in the mist and join the blue veil. Secrets revealed to those who would step across that verge into the uncultivated and wild places; bestowed upon intrepid wanderers who search and range about the furrowed edges and breach the gates of nature herself, beyond the point where the road ends. They go in search of those rare treasures intangible. It is plunder given to those troubadours who navigate with nothing more than a whim and curious fancy to guide the way. Toward the nearest horizon and the distant they go to the hidden glens and glades in search of things that cannot be held or coveted to receive those priceless spoils. I had to stop myself once again as I waxed poetic concerning the passionate endeavors of strange travelers and curious madmen, myself among them. I should have been making tracks and putting some distance between myself and the truck. At which point, I did just that.

Ill

Oft-times I find myself suffering an acute malaise that seeps into the very depths of my soul. At the close of autumn where the dim months wait, I find myself stricken with that sickness of longing and lament, that golden and painful hindsight we all suffer from time to time. It has become much more virulent with age, while its symptoms become much more debilitating. I feel its effects most poignantly on beautiful afternoons with the knowledge that the sun's radiant grasp is tenuous, it's presence is failing. I fear that bittersweet yearning, that sickness of mine, has fallen more into melancholy of late as the deep appreciation of things both precious and fleeting has laid its claim upon me. That very appreciation, the one borne of age and temperance, is the great scourge of my existence, and never will I be rid of it. For what I wouldn't trade to have been blessed with such insight in my youth when the years ahead seemed long while I remained invincible in my ignorance.

Steps

So, at long last I began my foray into fall and hummed a tune befitting such a glorious day, I set forth with a calm levity in my step and my heart; something I lacked as of late. To the west where stood a great old forest I spied between columns of ancient maples and mighty Oaks, a trail. More than just a trail, it was the very gateway into a grand autumnal landscape painted with the colors of fire and gold. The spring in my step carried me effortlessly into the golden afternoon and the ease at which I progressed gave me pause to suspect that splendorous autumn had lent a hand. The way was indeed easy and dare I say, that frolicking came to mind; albeit briefly. Skipping and even hopping passed through my cerebrum as fanciful options while I made for that mystical woodland and all of its promised secrets.

Yellow

A Clouded Sulfur drifted past, carried by the warm breeze up into the pale blue sky. It joined a handful of its kin far above that lucent landscape where they danced in sanguine communion that fine October afternoon. Surely these were but the last remnants of a once-great and vibrant cohort. With longing, I watched the delicate yellow creatures soar far above the forests and fields, a heavenly gossamer sail gliding on the blue ether. Soon after they were gone from sight, delivered into hose realms I cannot fathom.