Lost Giant in a September Light, Fresh Pond Reserve. Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I’ve been talking a lot about the magical and golden glory of September light; so before September slips into October, allow me to explain.  The sun crosses the Equinox and there are crisp days with long shadows.  You wander in the woods searching and then you come across a place where the sun just filters through the canopy and like a spot light illuminates a decaying tree stump, its ancient trunk lying beside it, and you cannot help but realize that this tree stood there perhaps as long ago as the nineteenth century, when Longfellow sailed on Fresh Pond, when Winslow Homer fished there, or when Harvard undergraduate Teddy Roosevelt skated there on a bitter cold night.  Your thoughts wander and you wonder precisely what William James and William Dean Howells spoke about on their Sunday walks around the pond.  They walked as I do, did they take any notice of this now faded giant?  Such is the warm and golden glory of September light.