An autumn melange

The last of the leaves flutter whimsically from their branches to kiss the cold, wet ground for yet another life of nothingness. When in mid air they break into a dreamy dance wearing the most seductive of expressions, breaking many a heart in the go. Some dangle, hopeful and holding on to whatever minuscule remains of their life. The treetops have begun showing signs of baldness and bereavement. Naked and stripped of all joy, the colourless boughs will soon be left alone to battle yet another harsh winter.
Soon this mosaic canvas will give way to a desolate landscape of monotony and monochrome. Soon the familiar powdery white will embrace one and all in its cold, death-like grip. And soon the time for the big sleep will arrive, before longing and life sprout up their baby heads once again. To a new world, to a new beginning.

With my beloved season almost gone, in a fevered nostalgia of losing all the grandeur once again I tried stitching a mental patchwork of all the beautiful autumns we have lived here. How different and diverse the frames feel despite the similarity of the mood and the colours of autumn. Every picture has a little story to tell, of its place and the chunk of our life spent there. I must preserve it all, leaf by leaf. And so I have tried to recreate it here, as far and wide my kaleidoscopic memory could take me.

Our very first autumn. Maple leaves, fiery and feisty, framed right outside our bedroom window in Seattle. Blueberry picking in a nearby farm. The ripe vineyards of Napa Valley, wearing a golden glitter in the late afternoon sun. Amid fat, fleshy pumpkins in San Antonio, Texas. Perhaps the only patch of colour there in October. A twilight walk in the densely wooded metro-park in Cleveland, Ohio. Trees captured in their tallest possible glory, my most preferred angle of photographing them. A fascinated moment with the wee bit o' castle inside the park. Reaching out to the autumnberries before the birds take them all. A couple of idlers in the idyllic Vermont countryside, the dream destination for leaf-peepers. A carpet of maple leaves of every possible earthy hue. A day under the golden aspens and a clear blue sky in Colorado. Back to the ruts again after three long years of wandering, a foggy autumn morning in Seattle. Two happy feet set out on a drizzling autumn walk again. The completion of an autumn circle, and many more.