last rites of autumn - wichita mountain wildlife refuge - oklahoma

Fall leaves peaking in Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge

 The last rites of Autumn, taken earlier this evening in my beloved Wichita Mountains. So good to be back home so many thousands of miles later.

Under a most luminous gibbous moon tonight, we sat in the warm tropical air, the south wind teasing the changing leaves, and listened to the bitter sweet sounds of a number of nocturnal insects - still plucking their summer tunes, oblivious to how soon summer would be over. This was, indeed, to be their last song. A few hours later the wind turned as if in a tailspin, bared its winter fangs, and now howls through the canopy as the temperatures plunge below freezing.

Cache Creek running through the Narrows