LordM giveaway, September, 2017

Fall... My favorite time of the year.

Most of the time my Happy Place is my back porch. I enjoy sitting there on a cool evening with a fat cigar, and watching the wildlife.



Or spending time with my kids at the lake.




And of course, I have a favorite fishin-hole myself.




Great pics everyone

 

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I love seeing all the great pics others have posted, unfortunately I don't have pics for my favorite Fall memory. My favorite Fall memory goes all the way back to my junior tear of high school. We didn't have the best football team by far, and I wasn't even good enough to break into the playing rotation, but on one fall night we managed to come together as a team and beat the number one team in the state. I didn't get to play in the game, but being on the sidelines was an amazing experience I'll never forget.

I managed to find a write up about the game just in case any one wants to read a bit more... http://usatodayhss.com/2016/looking-back-when-manual-last-beat-st-x-in-1993

 

Here's a special memory of autumn from not too long ago:
Each October, I lead a group of high school seniors from the school where I teach on a wilderness retreat to the Red River Gorge in central Kentucky. The wilderness retreat consists of two nights camping and hiking but more importantly, recharging of spiritual, emotional or existential batteries. I've never felt very comfortable in church, odd for a fella who teaches at a catholic high school, but see the divine in the natural world. On this particular outing, I had left early from school, ahead of the boys and the other leaders, to scout a spot and set up camp. I found a suitable spot, and after unpacking my gear and pitching my tent I was floored by the beauty and silence. Here I was, alone, looking out upon a carpet of fiery yellow leaves. I could hear everything and nothing simultaneously. The air, the far off highway drone, the critters rustling. But in that place at that moment, there was complete peace and calm. The boys soon arrived and filled the silence with its opposite, but the memory of that moment still resonates. I'm not a picture taker, never have been, but the image is forever in my mind. And because I'm an English teacher, I give you not a photo but the closing stanza of ol' Bill Wordsworth's classic "I wandered lonely as a cloud"

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

(This seemed like a better choice than Keats' "To Autumn" which is basically about the fact that he is dying of consumption at the age of 25...)

 

I love fall, September is my favorite month of the year. I would have to say one of the things I love is just the smell of the fallen leaves, because it tends to trigger random memories of fall. If I had to pick some, any of when we were young and going trick or treating were great. We used to go to a buddies neighborhood as we live out in the sticks. Now great memories are of the different costumes my children have donned over the years. Last year my son was a lion and the year before that an Owl .


Thanks for the contest!

 

Fall has always been my favorite time of year. Pleasant days, cool nights.
Sunset

Supermoon

From Cabin Porch
From Cabin Porch

Coming down mountain from my cabin.

 

no pics, but when I used to live in upstate New York Rochester/Pittsford and the trees would turn colors with the most beautiful display of yellows oranges reds to where the forest looked like it was on fire with gorgeous colors. I can remember all the kids having very nice halloween costumes for trick or treating. neighbors really went all out in Halloween decorating their homes. Here in St. George, Utah they only decorate so-so in my opinion. I also miss going out to the pumpkin patches in New York where the people selling the pumpkins were so nice and helpful. I don't know if they have a pumpkin patch place here in St. George, Utah ? thanks for the giveaway. Happy fall to you and your family. I like fall because of the leaves changing colors and that the weather starts cooling down instead of being so hot here in Utah.

 

(Please do not enter me in the drawing )
I'm so glad Rhode Island is being represented in the giveaway prize!!! Fall is a great season in RI, and all of New England. The leaves have just begun turning here.

 

That's a heck of a catfish you have there.

 

Fall is God's beautiful paint brush spreading across the countryside.
An early autumn snow can make the ordinary beautiful, like this abandoned truck.

But mostly fall is the time for giving thanks with family.

 

That one was a 22lb blue cat... My record is a 38lb flathead... So far

 

In the spirit of the thread, here's a late autumn picture of the aforementioned fishing spot. Taken in 2015, I transferred it from an old phone.
I was gonna edit it into my original post, but it is too late.

 

SE Colorado, just 20 miles from New Mexico. My cabin is at 11,873ft. I'll be headed back in a couple of weeks to close it down for the winter. Last year it had 6ft of snow on the level.

 

Here are a couple more pics I took last fall from my deer blind. They were burning the fields in KS, and the sunrise/sunsets were spectacular, and red. They were taken in SE NE.

 

A dear friend of mine that I will always have in my heart and mind. Couple years back I was going through a lot of depression and bad things, she was always always always there to help me through my rough days. She would stay up till 4 in the morning sometimes and talk to me, go to bed, wake up at 8 am, go to school, go to work, come back home and do it all over again the next night even though I tried to make her go to bed. She would listen to me for hours and talk some sense into my brain, and made me feel important. Never got to meet her in person, but I really didn’t need to because she made it seem like she was there. Met her in a chat website. Bout the only autumn picture I can find because I live in Arizona and we don’t have much of an autumn here to write home about. Everything here is generic and cookie cutter so this was the best I can find. I haven’t talked to her in a long time, we just decided to let each other go because it was very hard when you have feelings for someone and live long distance. I had feeling for her and she had feelings too, but it lasted for one year before we decided it was best to let each other go. I’d say it was one of the best years of my life and had a lot of fun talking to her. She was the best friend I could ever ask for. She saw through all my imperfections, and cared a lot about me even though my teeth were rotting away, and had to get dentures. Always thinking of her. Case you wondered, she from Thailand, but moved to America with her family.
I will forever have her in my heart.

 

I grew up in Las Vegas. I didn't understand what the word "Fall" meant as we only had two seasons: Hot and kind of Cold. It wasn't until I moved to West Point, NY for college, where I learned of the beauty of Autumn. I thoroughly enjoyed my four years there but enjoyed Autumn the most because it was just before everything got cold and dark. Beautiful times.

 

Thanks for the competition! My 'happy place' is a spot upstate, where my family owns a beautiful place. I love how when the leaves are fully out, the foliage reflects across the lake. One autumn, my grandpa took me fly-fishing, that was highly enjoyable.

Here's to a good fall.

 

Lord M, I wish I had a pic. It would be hunting quail as a teenager with my Dad in upstate Missouri farmlands in the 80's. I absolutely hated it! I can remember the cold mornings getting up at 4 AM to pack into the old car with our shotguns in the trunk, along with his buddies from long ago and their bird dogs.

The best part of the day would be breakfast at a diner in Marysville MO.

We would trudge through those fields, dogs and shotguns in tow for hours (sometimes in miserable rain) and even though my Dad's legs were destroyed from an acid accident and multiple falls as a Truck Driver; he would always outlast me as a hunter.
He also taught me that killing an animal wasn't for fun. That it was a life and I had to own taking it...something that I don't do now (no judgement).

I'll always remember those moments with my Dad...he's been gone a while now but they are vivid to me. I can almost smell the gunpowder and his approval when I made a great shot...I inherited his guns when he passed and still look at his Remington Semi Auto Improved Cylinder knowing that I could never shoot as fast as he did! For those in the know, I always needed a full choke...too slow!