Baring Fall

We've all see the movies where there lies a trail of garments, lacy and delicate, leading off screen. The suggestion is there. Something secret and private is happening, something primal and to do with love. We are  embarrassed, but at the same time, we are flushed with happiness. Fall is the same. We all love autumn. While every season has its beauties, this season is unique. Hers is a passing loveliness, a kind of grandiose funeral of what was, now arrayed in the splendour of her undress. The promise is seductive, that of a Spring and new life, but we must trust and wait through a long, cold, wet winter. Fall. It is, of all seasons, the heart of resurrection. A weekend drive, or as he calls it "a drift",  with a dear friend, resulted in finding, accidentally, ourselves on an isolated uphill drive, twisting and turning through forests of maples and alders, evergreens and tall, yellowed grasses that turned out to be Sumas Mountain. Glimpses of a valley, with a seemingly slow-moving  Fraser River, plied only by a single boat making a V of white , lay stretched out, as we passed corners with bare branches allowing us to see what was below. A flirtation of views through screening limbs of black, made the way only more enticing as we found ourselves wondering if the road, now and again gravelled, would simply end. But on it went, and no matter how the car displayed in what compass direction we were headed, the titillation of what was around the next bend, kept us intrigued and proceeding. On one side, the stony hill rose wetly high above and on the other, the road  threatened with its soggy sludge, to fall away down the steep cliffs. But we kept on in anticipation. Anticipation of what? Old rock quarries, now wrecked in mossy piles of rejected granite, and glimpses of homes once hidden at the ends of narrow roads playfully revealed by  bare, betraying trees, were the only evidence that this brilliant array was shared. But just in case we strangers forgot, the camera preserved for us, the  glories of an ancient, pristine beauty.