Summer’s End

The end of summer seems to sneak up with startling abruptness in the mountains. Sagey greys and dusky rabbitbrush topped with yellow sprigs of late summer flowers, surrounded by grasses browned in the summer heat. Fine dust matting leaves. A tired respiration seems to heave up from the canyons in hot blasts—last gasps. Bellowing itself for the soon-to-be colors plashed about its flanks like so many embers of red, braided fingers of yellow and orange. A few summer holdouts paint the hillsides early.