There is no mistaking it, autumn has arrived. The first batch of leaves that turned were stripped down by wind and rain last week and scattered around the pasture. The survivors are turning more slowly, as if made cautious by the fate of their more impetuous brethren. We have had our first big frost, the fields white again, bringing back memories of last Winter's snow, and perhaps prophesying about the Winter to come. In between the extremes, we have had a few of those warm days where you wish for nothing more than to stretch out in the slanting afternoon sunlight. There is so little time to sit and watch it all. I have an election just over two weeks away, and mixing work with the campaign gets me out of the house at sunrise and keeps me away until after dusk. Our town and county may look small on a map, but they expand to continental proportions when you are traveling through one door at a time, talking to folks. Knocking on doors and asking for support is not something that comes naturally, but I do think that if you want your fellow citizens to vote for you and provide you with a living, you should at least have the courtesy to stop by and introduce yourself. It is at once invigorating and exhausting. Sometimes I think I have learned more about our hometown in the last month than I have in the last fifteen years I have lived here. Great works could be written on the different ways people decorate their front walks alone. So much love and effort spent to make a place in the world. I have talked to more people, shaken more hands, and spoken more in public these last few weeks than I have ever done before in my life. I will be glad when it is over, but I will also miss it a little. It is too early to predict the outcome of the election, but win or lose, the leaves will still change. Win or lose, it is time to get the barn ready for Winter and the lambs due to arrive in December.
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