Fall Falls Into…

Gray emptiness envelopes the northland.  As the leaves are beaten off the trees by days of late October rains and winds, the tourists disappear. 

Main Street,  Harbor Springs.  The first Sunday in November though, is a late-season gift of the gods.  Sunny,  golden, mild and desolate.  Volunteers pull up wooden framed planters around the trees growing through the sidewalk.  A few oddball groups of real human stragglers wander about. Most shop windows feature closed signs with a few valiant exceptions.

The waterfront docks are fenced over.    No admittance.   Huge blue, plastic-wrapped boats stud the landscape.   The atmosphere is peaceful, placid.   

Could it just be weeks ago that we wandered here from beach to beach chasing elusive purple fish and wallowing in warm water?  Was it only weeks ago that  we jockeyed for  a  waterside table at Dudley’s and tracked  minnows and gulls even while devouring tasty luncheon treats. 

Male tourist hogs September limelight
in front of indulgent female relatives.

September, then October, slipped away into a beautiful but quieter November Sunday.

The walkways, where Tomas hammed it up in the center of each shot and always in front of Maris, are empty.  

The air should ring with the sounds of kids laughing and calling. 

If this were a movie I'd make the air echo with the remembered childsong but today, in reality,
it is silent.

November: Real and surreal.

Winter:  Even now gathering forces to obliterate the straggling golden days.  Whooossssshhhhh!!!