My walk yesterday morning was hosted by a brilliant autumn wonderland.

Just a week ago, many of the trees here were still green. In another week, most of the leaves will be gone and shortly after that, so will we.

As much as I absolutely love walking and leaf peeping in the cool autumn air, I also absolutely detest what the beauty is preluding. Our harsh prairie winters are my least favourite time of year. When we’re here for the winter, I honestly feel cold from mid October until the end of April.

Last year, because of Covid restrictions, we had to wait until the land border opened before we could head to our winter home. It was already pretty cold here when we finally got away in early November and we experienced a few unfavourable weather conditions as we made our way south. You can read about one such day of our last year’s drive here .

This year, because we’re leaving almost a month earlier, the long range forecast looks good for our 2022 voyage south. Fingers are crossed that the weatherman is right for once.

We’ll definitely miss our friends and family here during the six months that we’ll be gone. At the same time, we’re looking forward to reuniting with our winter family in South Texas. Our lives in both places are total opposites, so the changing back and forth is refreshing and interestingly welcome. I believe this subject will be a future post.

Photo Note: Because I didn’t adjust the exposure when I was shooting my feature photo towards the morning sun, the original wasn’t as vivid as what I saw with the naked eye. In Snapseed, I was able to salvage the glorious colours that I actually saw yesterday. I added the portrait pre-set filter to deepen the tones, and then I used the tune image tools to tweak the contrast and warmth, and finally, I used the details tool to add definition to the leaves. Because I used so many edits, even at my usual size for a feature photo, the end result was a bigger image than usual, in terms of pixels. I downsized it even more to be within the optimum feature photo parameters, so I may have lost some quality there.

Original

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky