For a week or more, it seemed that we had gone from September to mid-November: sullen skies, chill and wet, a sort of demoralizing drizzle that seems to filter right into the very center of your soul, leaving everything around it cold and drawn. Gone the days of warm, clear blue and the view of sunshine on sharpening colors. Ash and sumac passed their prime in a time-slogged fog of temperatures twenty degrees below normal.

But then came yesterday. All that was gray and dismal disappeared in the nearness of bright sun and the kind of warm that makes you remember Indian summer. Colors fired in the light and the temperature seemed just right for long hikes and slow rides. Leaves played in a symphony of varied tones and all seemed good and right.

Except for the swarming elder bugs, dull and speckled, tumbling around in the breeze, gathered thick as fleas on a forsaken hound. Crawling on your clothes as you walked the sidewalk, covering the glass and latch and panels of the doors, drawn to the sudden warmth of stone and brick.

There is nothing of this world without some perceptible imperfection, some opportunity to lose focus of what is good and right. On the grayest day, some beauty lays its offered gift before us and on the brightest, some chance of irritation. Long after the last fog has faded and all of imperfection is ended, there will still be the glory of Light.

H. Arnett
10/20/09