Looks like our recent drought is going to deny us a colorful fall, at least along the banks of Gold Creek. The heart-shaped cottonwood trees have gone directly from green to dead brown. Many are covering this little used spur trail. In a normal September, any leaf that falls to the ground turns to soft mush. Today our feet crunch through the recently fallen.

I try not to worry about our rainless rain forest and just enjoy the noise. Why should the kids in New England have all the fun. Shafts of sunlight enrich the red of a few of the forest’s dogwood leaves. When one of the thirty-mile-an-hour gusts stirs the forest, the dogwood leaves flash their pink undersides.