The rose hips stand big and ripe, while the rose leaves shrivel. Grass tassels flitter in the wind, having shed their seeds. Hay is cut, dried and baled, and the fields are green again. The fireweed is spent. The last wild berries won't have enough sun to swell and ripen. The cattails explode into cotton balls. The fawn has lost its spots. No birds announce the morning sun. The winter firewood is stacked and dry.
The weather seems unsure. It puts forth a day like summer and then a day like a storm, but both are just facsimiles. The wind blows with new strength and the nights bite colder. The skittish weather seems hesitant to cross over, fabricating as many remaining warm days as it can.
The green of the leaves long ago lost its fresh brightness, and some have lost their green altogether. Many flowers remain, perhaps too late for seeds this year, the last bastions of summer nonetheless. A few honeybees collect their last winter stores.
The Sanderlings are ready to head south again. We saw them in the Everglades so many months ago. They travel fast, having arrived up here long before me. They fly faster than the seasons. I do not. I walk into the first day of Autumn.
16.9 miles to Amherst, Nova Scotia (1.3+25.9 km)
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