“Autumn… a second spring, when every leaf's a flower”

What can I say, it was simply a perfect day in the mountains. An after sex-like glow radiated undercover warmth like a '70's mood ring, and all was right and well in the two worlds that matter—the Here, and the Now.

If you snicker (hopefully) at my seemingly stretched analogy, then perhaps it's been too long since you've rolled around in "leaves of grass" under a canopy of Ms Autumn's "flowers." 

Walt Whitman took both risk and delight in celebrating sensual pleasures in the aforementioned book of poetry, at a time when such displays of rhetoric were considered immoral. He praised Nature and the "human form" interchangeably, elevating "what comes natural" from gutter to glory…

But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water   

Ah, pretty heady stuff for it's time… Cigarette, anyone?

So yes, it was that kind of day, "when every leaf's a flower," sensual, the ultimate expression of joy and love and Life's simple pleasures. I alternately praised and cursed the fleeting brevity of Ms Autumn; she knows well the art of the perfect tease, first the ankle, then the knee—the bared shoulder—then poof, she's gone.  

After a day hike above timberline, we headed over Molas Pass in order to reprise an old "flame," Lime Creek Road.  Once upon a previous fall time, when Bobbie and I were young and beautiful and as yet unbetrothed, we rode unsuspended Stump Jumpers on what can only be described as the most torturous 12 miles of potholed, bone-jarring, gut wrenching agony to be found short of Black Bear Pass. But as in Life, agony often gives birth to ecstasy, and Lime Creek Road is worth all the subsequent internal bleeding it effectuates come late September.  This time, however, we took the Subaru :))

Cigarette, anyone???

Peace Out…
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