What exactly marks the end of a season and the beginning of the next? The calendar has little to do with it. Despite the subtle changes that slowly happen over days and weeks, one day these all accumulate and the transformation from summer to autumn is all too evident. A lone trembling red leaf sends out the message to all: summer has ended.
Canada geese too announce the message in the marsh with their honking call. The days are getting shorter. Even the sky and waters at sunrise seem different, less warm and more ominous of the darker, colder mornings ahead.
As if to compensate, the marsh grasses glow with golden hues. Do herons dread the colder days ahead as much as we humans do? Warm and wonderful summers are especially difficult to leave behind.
The end of summer means food will soon be difficult to find for many creatures. In the marsh, the woods, and even the house, spiders can be seen diligently spinning their webs in the hopes of capturing the last of the season’s flying insects.
Those who haven’t prepared for the colder days ahead will be singing their sad songs in the days to come.
Please let me out so I can sing in the sunshine one last time.
This post was written in response to Scott Thomas’ End of Summer challenge at Views Infinitum.
All text and photographs copyright Amy-Lynn Bell 2012.
beautiful
fantastic photos; beautiful commentary. Just lovely!
Joy tinged with melancholy – such a tenderly written post, Amy.
What a lovely post. After a very wet summer in the UK, the arrival of autumn is almost a relief. We shall be in for a real treat as the trees turn orange and gold.
I would like to link to this post and share one of your beautiful photographs in a future post at soulsnet.com if that is alright. I will of course link back and credit you.
Thanks in anticipation
Corinne at soulsnet.com
Glad you enjoyed it Corinne. Go ahead.
Lovely Amy Lynn. Thanks for the beautiful introduction to my first Canadian autumn
I love the single red leaf falling and the heron standing near the marsh grass – they capture the change of season so well. The crickets do sound a little melancholy in the evening. The song takes me back to childhood where I associated it with returning to school…
Had to wait until I got to town to see the photographs, Amy-Lynn, but they were more than worth the wait. That lone red leaf…the spiderweb…the heron in the marsh…. Actually, the heron in the marsh (even the marsh itself) looks a lot like the Gulf Coast of Florida to me. Maybe your heron will be down in Aripeka this year.
Pamela, I’d love to find out what beautiful warm places those herons go. They’re such large birds, it would be incredible to see a flock of them heading south.
Very nice, Amy!
As for that 3rd photo with the great blue in the salt marsh, I think you’d have a fantastic composition if you cropped the top border down to the water line. Really, fantastic! I love it!
Did you shoot it in raw or only jpg? If raw, you could do much with it in photo editing; maybe even so as a jpg.
And perhaps to also crop out that grass in the bottom right, by moving the bottom border up. I’m having all kinds of fun with the image on my screen and holding an envelope up at different positions.
Catharus, I had considered doing just that but decided to leave the layers of marsh in the background to show how big it is. I very much enjoy cropping images too
That wonderful photo of the single red leaf is the perfect image for this post.
Love the spider web with grandson shot too !
I’m echoing others’ sentiments here, but that red leaf – what a great find for this assignment! I just love your heron shots too – I find those birds quite fascinating.
Karma, that red leaf was an awesome find and those herons are still fascinating to me, no matter how many I see.
Wonderful pictures, all of them, to celebrate the arrival of Autumn. I love the mood that the end of Summer light gives to your marsh. Thanks for your words too, Amy-Lynn.
I always feel as if each individual heron is thousands of years old and has Seen It All. They seem untroubled, able to rise above anything. One day soon that heron will step, step up into the sky and go wherever it has a mind to. There are frogs in Aripeka, for example. I love the golden light of autumn stealing over the marsh.
Gerry, that golden light makes the marsh grass look so different from the summer’s green. It’s especially awesome under a dark grey sky. I wonder what the life of expectancy of herons really is. Perhaps we’d be amazed.
[...] Amy-Lynn shares her wisdom of how a season truly ends…gradually over time but not noticed by humans until they wish to see or fall into them. [...]
[...] Amy-Lynn shares her wisdom of how a season truly ends…gradually over time but not noticed by humans until they wish to see or fall into them. [...]
The golden marsh is a tale and the heron is its teller. The photos gave me chills. Summer is gone.
Scott, why does ‘summer is gone’ sound so much more depressing than ‘autumn is here?’
Thanks again for the opportunity to participate in yet another one of your wonderful photography challenges
Thanks Amy
I’d like to share one of your lovely Autumn photographs in the next post at soulsnet. It’s about letting go. I hope you will come visit and enjoy it.
Thanks for your comments at soulsnet. I really appreciate it.
Corinne
[...] And for something really lovely to look at, here’s a beautiful picture from Amy-Lynn Bell’s wonderful post “Falling into Autumn” at Flandrum Hill, Nova Scotia. [...]