A gorgeous Sunday morning in October. Jane is busy preparing for her annual thesis committee meeting, so I take the car and return to my favorite woodland spot around these parts - a little point of forest jutting out into Liberty Lake near Reisterstown. As I enter the woods off the 795, the brilliant sunrise disappears behind a curl of morning fog. Down by the water's edge, mist is rising from the lake surface, and the fog casts a deep blue filter on everything in the distance. The leaves have begun to turn, the clusters of orange and yellow maple and birch dotting the shoreline in the distance. The water level in the reservoir is low after a long, hot summer here in Baltimore; I walk along the spongy ground where the lake has receded, and spend some amount of time sitting on a rocky outcrop that is usually underwater. I have now visited this particular spot of the woods in every season of the year, and it is certainly more beautiful than ever here and now, at the edge of autumn. In another month, the leaves across the water will turn brilliant red then brown, the trees will become barren, and eventually the lake will glaze over in a sheet of ice. The geese will soon arrive on their way south for the winter, having traveled from the distant reaches of Nova Scotia and Maine. Life continues on in Maryland. Wedding preparations are underway in California.
Out of the woods and on my way back home, I stop at the gravel outlook off of Deer Park Road, where Jane and I went stargazing two months ago, where we started our hike of the Soldier's Delight serpentine trail over two years ago. The sun is rising now, and the tendrils of fog are lifting off the prairieland. I take a photo of a lone tree in the barrens before returning to Baltimore.
