Getting Ready for a Long Winter's Nap...

It is a great comfort that no matter what is going on in our lives, the season move forward. In a time when the clouds, on occasion, dip down lower then the mesa, without us remembering to instruct it, the sun tilts sides way, the wind blows and the grass starts to turn brown. ...

and the evenings turn golden, just barely enough light for the deer to come into the lawn and pick the last of the apples on the almost leafless trees. 

More because the elements remind us, we humans do slip into our autumn activities. First Homecoming, where school is let out early and the students, parents and locals line Central ave for the parade, the cheerleaders riding restored fire trucks from up the mountain. 

Here the Homecoming royalty... 

aren't escorted in the backs of convertibles but pickup trucks and the homecoming dresses might have cowboy boots under them.

The other Fall activities- discussions of the weather, how cold and how much snow the mountains will have this winter and elk hunting. But it stayed too warm for the elk to come down low enough for a successful hunt this year. Warm enough to keep the windows cracked on the drive back down the mountain in Grandpa's old truck that carries the camper shell...

 Another activity that took much time this Fall...

Not riding horse, like you might think, but Daughter #2's involvement with the local high school's production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, set in the Wild Wild West. Someone leaving the borrowed boots on our porch yesterday, were so pretty in the tilting sun. 

The wind is still blowing down here on the canyon ridge, and the grass is still showing, though most of the leaves are now off the trees. 

Not so, farther up, where coming home from a weekend away on the other side of the mountains, we had to navigate this...

 and we meet these guys...

 who, looking for the grass, worked their way through a wire fence deciding the brown grass on the side or the road looked yummier. To hear them "churp" go HERE,