no turning back

It's fall on Kachemak Bay. There's a familiar biting cold to the air. The flowers are fading, and the leaves are beginning to shed themselves of the trees they've securely clung to. We've packed the gloves and ear-coverings in our cars again, so we won't be caught off guard when we need them, now more likely than not, when we are out on our walks.

Northern climate zones have their own unique fading of one season into another. Yesterdays lush leaves, broader than a beach ball, have yellowed and fallen. The only vain beauty of the plant that remains are the strong top stalks that support the seed pods, now ready for the wind to take them in a gust, and land upon the soil in hopes of reproducing next spring. At their height of glory, they were expansive displays of white lace, sitting atop tall green stems, having grown at break-neck speed, since they first broke through the soil in late April.
Now, they are but a mere skeleton of what they were, and soon will be tested by the strong fall storms, pelting rains and snow.
Once again, we have a landscape ridding it's self of the colors brought on by the warmth of the former season. We'll return to only the blue grey of the bay, the muted beige of the beach and driftwood, the green of the spruce and the black of the ever present ravens.

The songbirds and the sandhill cranes have departed.

The darkness creeps into the morning by increasing moments.

There's a new hush over the landscape, as the tourists have made their ways back home.