After a week playing with cows, it is time to settle back into a routine…A routine that will be pretty short lived, since some reasonably big changes are coming down the pike. More on that coming soon!

It feels good to sleep in my own bed again, to not be choking on dust daily, and to have my forehead not itching from my hat brim. The little things. The simple, little things.

Smoke from fires further west has turned the air here smoky. Haze hangs heavy over the Hills. In the picture of the road, on a normal day Harney Peak would be visible as a second layer of hills behind the first layer of horizon. As I was watering trees yesterday, the haze seemed to grow thicker while the afternoon wore on, and the farther peaks became completely obscured in the smoke. The wind picked up overnight, bringing more smoke, and cooler weather.

This is my favorite time of year–In Illinois, it came later, towards the end of September, and it will probably hold off a little longer here, but today the first whisper of fall had arrived. In the fall, the air feels sweeter, stronger, richer, the sunlight seems purer, glassier, and there is something mysterious in the slant of the shadows beneath the trees, and how the sun warms your back, your face, your arms. The wind seems to be more than a stirring of the air, but a herald, a message bearer. Nothing has changed and yet everything has changed. The summer is fading away. Winter is yet to come.