First Autumn Morning

The sun breaks over the hills. Orange light pours through a saddle, illuminates pampas grass and the spines of fallen leaves. Leaves surf on a gust of wind, fall, swoop up, turn. Flap like frantic birds. The dry grass quivers.

Photo by Mike Emmett

The leaves, the grass, my hands: everything seems brittle, stiff. Cold. It is cold—for the first time since I moved here—and the morning haze looks solid, almost. As if it were composed of that orange sunlight, compressed.

Composed of light.

The sun floats higher—untouches the horizon so fast I can see it move. They red-gold horizon fades to white, then blue.

Justin and I walk along a paved road, and where it turns to dirt we step down onto the Bay Area Ridge Trail (BART). 550 miles long, the BART circumvents the Bay over the crest of the hills. Today, we begin our 550-mile walk.