The Last Days of Summer

There’s something about the shift between summer and fall that feels almost sacred.

The nights are still warm enough to remember July, but the mornings carry a quiet warning — a whisper that change is coming.

Mist rises in the cool dawn air, drifting through the tops of towering jack pine and black spruce. The forest feels suspended in breath. Everything slows. Even the birds seem hesitant to break the stillness.

I scan the horizon.

Every autumn I look for her — the first sugar maple to turn.

And then I see her.

Scarlet against a backdrop of green and shadow. Standing alone, almost defiant, as if she couldn’t wait any longer to reveal herself. Her crimson leaves burn softly in the early light — not loud, not demanding — just present.

She is my reminder that beauty doesn’t ask for permission.

As the sun slowly climbs out of the valley and over the ridge, she catches the light before anything else. In that moment, she becomes the heartbeat of the forest. My heart skips, just slightly. It happens every year.

These are the early mornings of autumn in the north.

The season where time begins to slow. Where the air sharpens. Where darkness stretches a little longer each evening, quietly building toward the cold, white stillness of winter. It’s a rhythm you can’t rush. A transition you can only witness.

I close my eyes and breathe it in — the scent of damp earth, pine needles, and distant water. The warmth of first light against cool skin. The silence before the day begins.

Moments like these don’t last long.

But they fill you.

They remind you that light always returns, even after the longest nights. That beauty doesn’t disappear — it transforms. That the wild still holds space for awe, for reflection, for healing.

These are the mornings that stay with me long after the snow falls.

And they are why I keep chasing light in wild places.