This was the autumn that never was, for me at least. I was caught up in the glorious mountains of clouds obscuring the peaks through so much of monsoon season, and I’d forgotten not only that all good things must end, but that many are often followed by other good things.

There were signs. Like the dark green grass becoming tawnier every day. The male brown trout I caught were becoming more and more yellow in anticipation of spawning this season. Speaking of breeding season, I’ll never forget one early morning this September while driving by the Valles Caldera. As the sun’s first rays crawled over the eastern rim of the volcano, the blanket of fog covering the entire valley floor changed from gray to blinding white. Unable to stand it, I pulled over to snap some photos. The visuals were breathtaking. But it was the screams of randy bull elk emanating from beneath the fog that awakened me to the fact that autumn was upon us.

Watching the mountains around Santa Fe go from hot yellow to drab has triggered a powerful urge to make the best of what’s left, to sit with my favorite spots like Flag Mountain, the Truchas Peaks the mountain behind my grandparents’ house in Talpa and the pinkish jaras along the streams – and catch up to the season.

My last hurrah was yesterday when we drove up to Jack’s Creek in the Pecos Canyon. It was a marvelously dreary day, the aspen leaves strewn across the forest floor like gold coins —further proof of nature’s wealth.

It can never be said enough how much humans need the autumn season. We need to be reminded that life is a thing in motion, that moments must be savored as bites of a home-cooked meal.

“Don’t look away,” Autumn tells us. “This is what’s important now.”

I have to relearn this lesson every year. To realize something’s changing when I wake up in the dark and not to sunshine like in July. It seems only natural that this forgetting should occur, for autumn is like death, and who wants to live that each day? It’s better to be reminded only once in a while.

But that’s not the point, and we know it. The point is life. Even so, we also needn’t keep that idea in mind all day every day, just once in a while. Hopefully, we’ll just take things as they come without thinking at all.

Green leaves turn yellow in September. They flutter to the ground, or, in the case of the cottonwoods along the Rio and the Chama, they drift a swirling path on water as on an Indian summer breeze. They come to rest and become soil, so that new leaves will pop out in the spring.

That’s all there is to it. Nothing more. Nothing less.