Autumn's Past

A few days ago some autumn photographs crossed my desk and they set me to longing for fall. Because of our warmer temperatures fall in Florida generally comes in January. I like to think of it as Florida having 3 seasons - spring, summer, and fall. So when others are beginning to cool down and "color up", we are still in the throes of summer.

I am a true Floridian, being born and raised here. In fact, I live only minutes from where I grew up. My parents are in the same house they were in when I was born, and I believe I can count the trees growing there in my head. I say all that because I love Florida. To me there is no other place that is quite so beautiful.

Saw Palmettos and Slash Pines

But last November I took a trip to the Smoky Mountains to see the foliage. We go up every year. However, that was my first fall. Timing would have it that we arrived just at the perfect week of the year. I have been there when it was spring. Nothing is so beautiful as a Smoky Mountain spring. Iris of all colors in every garden. Red and orange poppies lining the highways. And there are dogwood, viburnum, and wild violets at every turn.

Canadian Violet

Then there is summer, lush and green with rushing waterfalls and flowing streams. Deer bounding across the highways. Bluebirds, indigo buntings, and scarlet tanagers singing from trees and fenceposts.

Scene By The Stream, Anna Ruby Falls, Helen, Georgia

But fall for me was the most glorious of them all. What marvelous colors! It was like walking in a wonder world. So when those pictures crossed my desk, they took me right back there - to a place where I saw the most beautiful things.

There are some places I have traveled that I will never forget, places that in some small way changed me, just by their being there. The Grand Canyon was one. I went there in high school. and stood on the precipice, looking down to what seemed like an endless bottom. That Smoky Mountain fall was another. Fleeting as it was, somehow it lingers still.

Autumn Bench, Part 2, Cherokee Lake, Murphy, North Carolina

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Suzanne
Suzanne Williams Photography
Florida, USA

Suzanne Williams is a native Floridian, wife, and mother, with a penchant for spelling anything, who happens to love photography.