Oct 26 -- In the high woods, the trees are turning into sky again. By now, the leaves that are left are drained of red and purple, and it is the turn of the yellows and browns. In the shadows there are muted pinks and siennas like trembling watercolours, and in the weakening sunlight there are late stands of translucent yellows like millions of fluttering Japanese screens. Against the light, the bones of the leaves appear, and a memory of my grandmother comes to mind. She had been a great beauty in her youth, and confined to a wheelchair just before she died, she held out her elegant translucent china blue fingers in front of her face, and she started crying, and she looked at me and said, "Oh, Peter, I am so old, I am haunted by my own hands."
There are piles of leaves everywhere, and as I kick them, that autumn smell comes up. It must be the only smell of death that is wonderful. I think of another smell of death, not wonderful, and a lost lovely elegance in an old lady's hands, and I sit on a rock and the sun grows cold for a long long time, and then I go slowly home. (p.t.)