One evening

I started out on a brief foray into the woods and surrounds last evening. The weather is still undecided from one moment to the next. Will it rain? Will the sun come out? Will the sun be out while it’s raining? Will I walk into a fog bank and never find my way out?

Last evening I experienced the majority of the weather events—minus only tornado and snow—that Roundtop experiences. In less than an hour, I was pummeled by rain, pelted by hail (very briefly), surprised by thunder and lightning, encased in fog and then finally treated to sunshine. Unsettled hardly begins to describe it, or me for that matter.

And yet, there was so much to see. The light went from breathtakingly exquisite to dead and dull—often in just the time it took to raise my camera. I didn’t expect to find many fungi just yet, figuring it would take another 24 hours after the rain for them to emerge, but I was wrong. Even in spots where I rarely find fungus, I found some. Fall leaf colors deepen almost perceptively in front of my eye.

Sometimes I think, how can anyone want to live in a city and never see all this? How anyone not want to be outside in a natural world when every moment vibrates with colors and light and things that dwarf any artistic expression we poor humans attempt? Sometimes I want to live in a tent outside because even the cabin feels as though it shields me too much from the forest around me.