An Abbreviated Autumn, Part 1

In which I present photographic evidence that it was no less lovely for what it was. Consider:

All photos in this post were taken on Friday, 6 October 2017, before the snowstorm of 9 October and the subsequent freeze cut the fall color season short.

As of this writing on 28 October, these trees are bare. But they blazed gloriously for their time.

One thing suffers as another benefits. I let this blog go over the month of October not only out of despair for having enough photos or—and more to the point for me—not having much of anything to say about these same views of the same Colorado high valley farm town where I live. 

Despite the dark start to the month, October 2017 has been very productive in terms of putting chapters of my latest novel to bed, and sketching in the details for how I want my contribution to the zombie post-apocalypse genre to end. I put Chapter 13 to bed the night of my birthday, Chapter 14 went down sometime last week, and I’m dangerously close to wrapping up Chapter 15, bringing me to the midpoint.

It’s taken me over a year to get this fire going again. For the first time, I’m confident about finishing this. When? As always, I don’t dare jinx myself. I’m just happy to build a compelling story, with completion in sight. Once I’m done with Chapter 15 I’m into part three of the book. We’ll do a couple of chapters of Fun and Games, the Darkest Hour, and then the bloody resolution.

One windstorm after another not only knocked the leaves off the trees, it took out a fair-sized aspen. This is before we went through that week or so of Windstorm of the Day.

Chapman Park, on the far west side of town, is my go-to for walking the long perimeter trail. Sadly, the daily afternoon windstorms made it almost impossible to approach sometimes.

The leaves did look pretty in the wet red clay of the trail. Note that most of these didn’t even have a chance to change color before they were ripped away by the insistent gusts.

There are other projects coming together, and although I’m more confident of them now than I was, say, a week, ago, there’s no point in bringing them up until I’m ready to unleash them on the public. Meanwhile, the thing to do is to empty my photo folders and brace for November.

West of the park and across Prospect Avenue, by the farthest western point of town. After this, there’s a hotel with a drive-in movie theater, the Regional Electric Cooperative, and miles of gorgeous Wild West high country until Del Norte, with the San Luis Regional Landfill somewhere in between.

It doesn’t bear too much thinking about, but for the short summer, and the even shorter autumn, October itself has proved to be the longest short month so far. I suspect the three chapters I put away had something to do with my temporal discombobulation. I’m just so happy to get things done for a change.

Walking east back home, but looking back. 

I love when the green is just getting ready to go over to gold...

...one can really lose oneself in it.

I had a feeling the seasons were taking it easy on us last year. Of course, the weather is a capricious thing wherever you are, and no more so than 7,600 feet up into the Colorado high country, surrounded by mountains of 11,000 to 14,000 feet. However it goes down this winter, I need something to show for it. Back to work, then.