The Season of Death and Life

Nowhere in the wide world is death so stunning, so beautiful as in our wooded lands-- a plethora of colors and shades as dying leaves clutch desperate to their trees until they can no more. Here and there a Japanese Maple seems to burst over- night into volcanic flame, its leaves dripping the molten red of lava as the lowering sun streaks through its myriad spires. And we walk like kings on thick carpets of gold, feeling keener of life by the sharp cool air, a temp somewhere between the deep, deep heat of birth and desolated frozen death. For some of us, autumn is sadness personified: presage of one's finality. For others, it's a season of glory, death's door adorned.