The signs of Fall are all around us.

Who needs a calendar? Our forests are full of trustworthy guides, singing songs and sending subtle signs. Summer is momentarily withheld just as restless autumn approaches.

The rare, golden autumn quality to afternoon sunlight is different from the hard summer glare of just one month ago. A momentary sunbeam illuminating floating gossamer strands of spider silk suddenly portends an entire imminent cascade of change.

Dusty pale wildflowers growing in autumn fields display muted colors: brown-eyed Susan, pale blue aster, yellow goldenrod.  Once-riotous bird song in this exact locale is now a deafening silence.

The young of the year are fledged, grown and dispersed. They perch in a faded forest canopy of ragged leaves, weather-worn and pocked with insect damage. Their forest home is now a faded vestige of a once verdant green domed cathedral of bird song. Thin fragments of song are practiced by fledglings, a weak reprise of the spring symphony but heard only briefly. One Naturalist calls these late season songs “Revival songs.”

“These days are numbered” I sigh when I see crimson leaves on the wetland-edge swamp maples. Trees adapted to living in wetlands are among the last to leaf-out each spring and the first to call it quits in autumn. Crickets chirp in lengthening darkness of approaching autumn evenings.

The last vestiges of summer collapse as both sunrise and sunset times stagger toward one another like lovers running in slow motion across an open field.

We feel the changes too, of course.