In the spring of 2014, I posted a piece entitled Nothing Gold Can Stay about a May walk that I took on the Trail Around Middlebury, about Robert Frost's poem of this title, and about the most wonderful book of Ann Pelo's, The Goodness of Rain. This time, on October 14, 2015, I am posting a second time with the same title after an autumn walk on the National Forest Service Robert Frost Trail near Bread Loaf Mountain and Middlebury's Bread Loaf School of English in Ripton, Vermont.

The colors were predicted to be late and not so vibrant this year because of our late summer. Not true! They are breathtaking and all I want to do is to be out in them, swept away by each vista, each landscape of new palettes of crimson, deep red, rose, gold, pale yellow and rust. There is wisdom in Leo Lionni's story of Frederick who gathers colors and words while his fellow mice gather grain. Frederick's supplies "warm the hearts of his companions and feed their spirits on the darkest of winter days," the review on Amazon tells us. Something about these days that we know will be gone soon wakes us up! What will be left when the leaves all fall is what in Vermont is called "stick season"...a world without vibrant color, rather every shade of gray. Before the snow falls and the frost turns the world into magic again, the days can seem very dark and even grim. If we let them! This year, I am preparing myself as did Frederick. I am drinking in these colors and the autumn air hoping that they will warm and inspire me until the spring. The fleeting colors are a reminder that nothing lasts really and that life is short! They call us to live in each moment fully.

Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost