October light

The birches go yellow from the top down. For a week the crowns are bright while the lower branches are still green, and on a clear morning the whole edge of the wood looks lit from inside.

I have been leaving the house forty minutes earlier to catch it. The path along the stream is quiet at that hour: a heron most days, once a fox that did not care about me at all.

Nothing to do but notice. That is the whole point of the walk.

By the weekend the wind had taken half the leaves. Next year I will start earlier.