Birch leaves start fall off by slowly turning yellow. They try hard to hang on, but they weren't designed to last like oak leaves, so in the end, they flutter fall down to the ground. Beneath them relying on some of the fresh hard frosts crow's, ravens, and even some blue jays glean the road ditches gobbling up grasshoppers that didn't last the night. A night so clear in the sky, Orion's bow shimmers a warning to all of the soon to be hunted. Geese know what it means and moon or no moon, they head south fluting above my deck unseen as I listen to them sail past. The dog cocks its head and then goes down the steps off somewhere in the dark yard. No cricket chirps tonight, no moths floating by my solar lights, no bats, no frogs. It's all quiet. If wood smoke made a noise my chimney would be loud but it just puffs a long silent whisp that floats out gray over the peak, semi swings about the darkened yard and I inhale deeply of it as it goes by. These nights are too far apart, and far too few of them. I stand here in a thick paid shirt with coffee steaming and I think that maybe I should grab an armload of wood for the fireplace. Maybe, but I don't. It's so quiet; I think I could hear a star fall if one did. Just breathing all this fresh cool crisp air makes me smile. The dog comes up on the deck, it wants in now. I open the door, she shuffles in the house and I think with luck I'll get a few more weeks of this fleeting time. This time of no bugs, Lord I dislike bugs. This weather can make me work harder than any other season of the year and I fall asleep so quickly, no laying in a sweat drip't mindset then I wake up ready to go. Everything about where I live is in season, its all fair game, so what game do I want to play based on nothing more than the weather. And the weather will change, sure as im going in the house tonight, it will tell me in one day when fall or autumn or whatever you want to call it, is over. The needles on the tamaracks that have waited and wilted for just there time, there perfect season, in a night they will turn yellow, carpet the ground, and it will be all over. The trout whisperer