The air is cooler today than it’s been in a while, crisper and drier too. The sky is slate gray with only patches of blue here and there, and where the afternoon sun manages to scrape through the clouds, its light is a dull silver instead of the usual gold. The evocative fragrance of a bonfire mixes with the smells of hay, leather, and chicken litter, so that closing my eyes takes me back to our beloved Buffalo Mountain.
Out of nowhere a breeze kicks up, scattering a thousand fragile oak leaves and slicing through my long but thin cotton sleeves. I am reminded gently that we’re still in the middle of January, that the sublime springtime fantasy these past weeks was exactly that.