Second Peak

This year we have had a kind of second peak color, this past week. I was very upset over missing the first peak while at the leadership camp of doom, so this has soothed some of my outrage. I may have missed the flaming pink and red of the sugar maples, and the lemon flurry leaf-fall of the honey locusts, but this week the red maples and oaks have turned these astonishingly intense dark golds and oranges and burgundies.

And this week is also one of the two weeks or so a year when my bus ride to work happens while the sun just peeks over the horizon, light flowing out nearly horizontally and catching the tops of all the trees. So this morning it lit up those intense colors so that they glowed, in contrast to the long dawn shadows, and I spent the ride to work beaming out the window. I want to pour this morning into a cup and drink it. It would be smoky and citrusy and probably alcoholic.