Trailer Wife

Okay. Try to look past the (mind you, adorable) tot and focus on the trees behind him. Yellow! YELLOW. Yellow everywhere. One night I went to bed and the trees were lush and moodily green. And then I woke up the next morning and they were this crazy shade of Big Bird Yellow. I've been trying to capture their intensity all week, but I think it might be impossible. Because part of the Yellow experience in Fairbanks is the fragrance of the suddenly autumn air (Pinot Gris, to my nose), the hooting and calling of busy birds preparing for the flight south, and the soft sighing of a music-video style wind that billows my hair in just the right way. After 28 years spent in Western Oregon, land of the (formerly) most beautiful fall landscapes in the known universe, I am, in a word, agog.

Smeared against the stately evergreen, these swaths of vibrant yellow seem almost indecent. The shock of it has been such a lovely surprise. Everyone I meet tells me that there hasn't been a fall so warm and long in years. Of course, these pronouncements are immediately followed by dire warnings of what is to come. Snow by October, they promise.

As a side note, the week we left Scotland Aberdeen was hit with Old Testament style rainfall. So I'm pretty sure that the god's are gracing our every move.