As the year bends down into its end among the shortened days and lengthening evenings of autumn, there comes a day of crisp air from the north; a harbinger of winter that seems to carry with it the last of the bright light of a fading summer. The cold nights and warm afternoons have worked their magic and on such a day, the green of the leaves has faded and the burnished golds, ambers, oranges and scarlets, the burgundies and purples that are the true colors of the trees around us paint the leaves like ornaments. The blessings of that fading summer are being brought in by farmhands on countless country farms: pumpkins and puppet squash, apples in all their splendid varieties, grapes for the wine press and blackberries for the jampot.

On such a day, on such a frosty morning, we set out with a good cup of coffee for the country roads that will take us to the mountains and the waterfalls, roadside farm stands and remote wineries. This is a day we have waited all year for. The sky is bright blue, the light is brilliant, the colors warm and cheerful as we wind up into the foothills. The air tastes like biting into an apple. We pass lonely farmhouses with their lonely barns, and we can only imagine the lives of the families who have lived their for generations. Forgotten scarecrows still stand in their cornfields, county stores are decked out with chrysanthemums, white steepled churches stand next to their churchyards.

We park the car and take a path through the woods up to a mountain top. Burnished leaves flutter down in the shadows, one by one, glinting in the autumn light. We hear a brook murmuring somewhere off in those woods. At the top of the climb the sky opens up and in the stillness a couple of thousand feet above the world and its problems, we sit and contemplate the magnificent landscape and its timeless steadfastness; the rocky summits, the wrinkled valleys, the ridges of mountains dusted with the rainbow colors of fall, and we think of the maker of that landscape. We seem closer to God, somehow, up on those heights. And somewhere along that trail is a hidden waterfall, and in the cool shadows under the blazing trees, we listen to its peaceful music of grace. We watch its refreshing flow wearing the edges off the sharp stones and think we have felt something of an experience of life. Something of compassion. Forgiveness. Renewal.

Somewhere along that country road we come across a farmhouse whose porch is studded with jack o'lanterns. Up on a slope, just before a line of Maples that have lost half of their leaves, there is an old barn with its silo. What leaves are left in the trees seem ready to float to the ground. The farm stand is piled with pumpkins great and small, some fat and squat, others stretched and twisted. Grotesque gourds grin at you from wooden boxes. Winesap apples, Honeycrisp apples, Jonagolds and Cortlands fill the air with their tart, sweet scent. There is a wooden shelf lined with jugs of fresh apple cider, wildflower honey, and blackberry jam. Our thoughts drift to the joys of Thanksgivings and Halloweens past, those years in childhood when we went door to door dressed up as skeletons or hoboes or pirates, and those delicious bags of peppermint patties, Reese's pieces, Mr. Goodbars and candy corn that were the anticipation of that holiday. Not far off is that roasted turkey, gravy and cranberry sauce, the bean cassarole and butternut squash, the raisin stuffing and sweet potatoes, the cider and the wine, the pumpkin pie and the apple pie laid out along that long table. Sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts, cousins on the way for games and dinner, music and laughter that brightened those darkening nights of late fall.

The trunk of our car fills with the treasures of fall, and for one last moment, we try to hold on to that old house on the slope, the trees, the light, the air and the last of those glittering leaves that we know we will not see again until next year.

Such is the tart, crisp beauty and joy of autumn. What would our world be like without it?