Walk With Me Into Autumn

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

Ragamuffin Studies is taking a break from the One Hundred Species Challenge this week in order to bring you a special Autumnal Equninox Walk with Me Wednesday.

The Autumnal Equinox marks the day upon which we have equal lengths of daylight and darkness as the days shorten in the northern hemisphere.

This was the somewhat clouded sunrise on equinox. The sun is rising almost due east. By the Winter Solstice on December 21, it will rise above the ridge on the right of the picture.

Even though summer was officially due to end,

it was still a beautiful day for a walk.

Here, the Engineering Geek,

all decked out in an astronomy T-shirt,

stands poised with Lily, ready to set off.

We finally had a chance to walk

in Sedillo Canyon again, now that the summer

rains have finished. Here we saw that the monsoon had cut the channels a bit deeper at the confluence of the east and south branches of the wash.

Although the sun is still warm,

there is gold on the mountain,

the gold of newly turning Aspens.

Caterpillars climb to the tops of slender stems. Though the sweet clover still blooms like summer, they caterpillar knows that the time of Turning has come. It wraps itself in silken tallit*, reminding us that we too must change or die.

*prayer shawl

The first sunset of Autumn, and the sky is anticipating the deep October blue.

The sunset just three months ago was at the top of the mountain at the right of the picture.

The days are getting shorter.

The sunlight is getting weaker as the solar angle becomes smaller. We can no longer ignore the seasonal shift in the light.

Autumn is here. The time and the season for counting the harvest of the year. The time and the season for Turning and Returning.