When I Am in Love with the Mountains

You know, my least favorite day of the year, since I moved out West is that first day in late August, or could even be early September, when you go outside and you feel the first bite of fall. The air is cooler, the crisp is sharper, there is a chill down your spine and your exposed toes remind you they need to be covered: you got the wrong shoes on! 

It's a mean day, really, because as much as I hate the chill in the air, and the long sleeves, and the sweatshirts ... I love the mountains this time of the year. I love when the mountains and the trees are still deep, dark green (before they turn into the muted and deaf brown), and the prairie grass looks like the melted liquid balloon of the sun burst and poured all over it. The contrast between the gold and the green can only be achieved by one painter and one painter alone - and He lives up there, in the sky. 

Prairie grass and mountains outside our neighborhood

And speaking about the skies: that's another thing that makes me fall in love with the mountains, here in the West - and this goes for any season, really: the sunsets and the sunrises are out of this world eerie. The colors you see out here are impossible to find anywhere else - the deep reds and yellows, the crazy, tormented, confused and complicated clouds, moving at surreal speeds, and the height, this crazy Big Sky of the West that dwarfs you and makes you feel like an ant. 

September sunrise in my backyard

September sunset in my backyard

It's all love and helpless abandon. And all awe. And it's going to be imprinted in my brain, no matter how bad my Alzheimer's might get one day. No matter how far away from it all I will be ...