Gentle Autumn Dreamscape Along Spring Creek

The autumn colors can be rather sneaky. You are waiting and waiting for the show, and then suddenly you look up, and everything around you has changed. But it happened in such a way that maybe you never even noticed.

I took a back road to work, traveling along Spring Creek, and realized as I was driving that the trees around me were shot through with yellow. It's hard to get a picture of it, really, as somehow the light itself is just . . . different. More golden.

And yes, I did catch a glimpse of the elusive heron. He or she hangs out in the bend where the creek is widest, and where (coincidentally?) there is really nowhere to stop for photographs. Smart bird.

But just before that, I pulled over into a tiny parking lot along the road and hopped out to snap a few pictures of the gentle fall foliage shades. It's not really in full riot mode yet. And some years, to be truthful, the show isn't really like that.

It's more like a dreamscape: a painting of a pretty little woods you might visit in a happy, gentle autumn dream.

I wanted the song to accompany this to be about a painter or a painting, and so here is Joshua Kadison with Jessie, from his excellent 1993 debut album, Painted Desert Serenade. Jessie, paint your pictures of how it's gonna be . . .