ESSAY & PHOTOS: The Yellow Wood

I guess one of the unrecorded benefits of oxytocin (a hormone stimulated in the pituitary gland) when caring for babies and small children-makes you feel warm, trusting, open, is the ability to enjoy every trope, stereotype and cliché the great artists of the world ever created.

I’m having such a lovely autumn.  It’s so easy to do so in Southern California anyway. It doesn’t start until November, and during it camellias begin blooming and roses continue.  The sky is blue and quite clear, as Santa Anas blow our valleys clean of lingering smog.  My daily jog, my daily drives, all filled with the beauty of trees and leaves.

The leaves in the first picture are liquidambars, and in the picture to the right, ginkgos, perhaps my favorite for their unusual and elegant shape, so thoughtfully edged with lime green.

I jog down the street with my IPod Nano lifting me up with “Oh Happy Days” (Edwin Hawkins Singers), and rejoice in the day the Lord has made.’m having such a lovely autumn.  It’s so easy to do so in Southern California anyway. It doesn’t start until November, and during it camellias begin blooming and roses continue.  The sky is blue and quite clear, as Santa Anas blow our valleys clean of lingering smog.  My daily jog, my daily drives, all filled with the beauty of trees and leaves.

The leaves in the first picture are liquidambars, and in the picture to the right, ginkgos, perhaps my favorite for their unusual and elegant shape, so thoughtfully edged with lime green.

I jog down the street with my IPod Nano lifting me up with “Oh Happy Days” (Edwin Hawkins Singers), and rejoice in the day the Lord has made.

 “ I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.”  - Andrew Wyeth

Southern California escapes the long cruel winter - it’s not necessary for its poets to hunker down and explain why 6 months of winter is good for the soul. Living here, I feel like I’ve gotten away with a crime, or got out of prison on early release, guilty for choosing to live here, I guess.

  It’s a reverent pause here before the given mercy of a brief winter, a devotion before we receive the blessing of an early spring.