We shiver inwardly at this sign of approaching winter, a sign for us of cool, crisp days ahead, the fall of leaves, the shutting down of things. A sign of loss, of death, of our own death.

Does it draw us to the future, taking us out of immediate concerns and confronting us with the eternity ahead?

Or is it in the recognition that these alien beasts know something of nature and the Earth that we've lost, making us tremble at power unknown.

I think it is all this, and our loneliness. Our wistfulness at seeing companions who've given trust to each other, winging in confidence through the vastness of possibilities toward the horizon of the unknown.

Photo taken 1999.