Conifers supply contrast. Such glorious scenery, I like to think, would give pause even to the most woebegone summer lovers among us. The natural world, so they say, began in mineral form. Somewhere along the way we humans arrived, wide-eyed and eager, the critical factor in some absurd equation. A mere whiff of the wind fills the animal brain, these days, with dim memories of crystalline water.
Rodents grow fluff and contemplate burrows.
Foxes peek through flaming sumac, suddenly singleminded. Deer renew a seasonal diet, heavy on the antifreeze. Geese grow vocal. Crows form posses. And a single dark-trunked tree wears shiny red leaves, the color of new, wet blood.