Late fall in the country

On a recent, lovely late-fall afternoon of this Indian Summer that blessed us with 70-plus-degree weather for most of my mami's visit from Puerto Rico, my husband dragged me almost kicking as screaming (as usual) away from my all-consuming work, and the three of us went off into the woods. (Mami's shadow playfully waved at the camera.)

My mami comes yearly to visit on my birthday and for Halloween, and this time she stayed through the election (and what an election that was, right?). She loves walking in the woods, so my husband thought of a trail near our small college on the hill, thinking it would please her, and it did not disappoint.

The beauty of the woods in late fall is of a special kind, and includes rather portentous views, like the two trees crossed like an "X" above the trail, likely the results of the recent hurricane-force windstorm.

There isn't much color in late fall, but these lipstick-red berries on a dessicated plant made for a good contrast as the sun started it's slow drop from the sky.

A pretty-in-pink tree regaled us with is canopy, which stretched almost across the trail, as the waning sun played hide and seek with us in the little stream, blanketed with dead leaves.

Another burst of color emerged among fields covered by a fuzzy-headed brown weed.

And as the sun hit the still-green fields below the little hill we hiked, the view made my mami and I exclaim.

Still, since there was dinner to cook, classes to plan, and work to be done, we turned back after our short intrusion into the quiet and lonely woods, and we left its late-fall mysteries behind, until another day.