Earlier this week my friend David described his morning in western Canada:

Driving in this morning to the Debussy arabesque that sounds like raindrops. The buildings black and with such clear lines against the sky in the early half light. The tiny light on the propeller plane glinting almost like a dot of sunlight. The young woman with a backpack striding along on the sidewalk, so confident and hair golden even in the early half-light. And the young man, with a backpack too and walking so tentatively.

The morning here in Harmony is a sodden red-gold over green, with a sepia tinge of decay. Yesterday I picked my first pail of honey mushrooms, and afterwards my hands smelled like the forest floor--rich, damp, rotten.

His roots dry up beneath,
and his branches wither above.
His memory perishes from the earth,
and he has no name in the street.
He is thrust from light into darkness,
and driven out of the world. 

--Job 19: 16-19