The shift into autumn has been slow and delicious this year, full of rosy skies and a land rendered golden by the creeping chill. I have been plucking every flower in order to dash color around our home like a mad painter. I haven’t enough vases to hold it all.

With the change of seasons and the fella’s recent acquisition of a Hasselblad film camera, we have been going out in the evenings chasing photographs. As dusk begins to fill the corners, we grab our gear and pursue the light, attempting to affix with chemicals and paper a season which is known for its brevity. How incredibly human, this desire to preserve that which is impossibly grand and transient, like a season or a sunset. I have been thinking on this a lot lately.

A few days ago, I was singing to a Nina Simone record against the bite of my jeweler’s saw when I noticed the wind picking up outside my window and a flurry of leaves begin to twirl around the house. I raced downstairs, grabbed the fella who had been contentedly napping on the couch, and bounded outside to stand under the trees and watch the beginnings of a thunderstorm.

There should be a word for those moments before a storm when the world is swelling and swaying, and the trees lean forward to dig their toes deep into the earth. Every bird and beast tucked in for the evening, and even time seems to lie down and be still to let the storm pass without resistance. The verve in the air escalates until I could howl in anticipation. The wind sweeping under every leaf, the mad twisting of the trees, the eerie shifting color of the sky, the crackle of aliveness in my soul, these are the grand, transient things I would like to preserve and tuck into a shoe box for later. But until that is possible, I am happy with golden fields and sugary sweet sunsets.