doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com There will be a day, soon . . . .

. . . . when the late afternoon sun, some 30-45 minutes before setting, will cast a beautiful golden tone of light on the tree lines to the east, and the whole world will be bathed in a golden glow.

I have noticed this for much of my life and have taught my wife to watch for it. I think it must have something to do with the angle of the sun's rays. Whatever it is, it is unmistakable, and almost breathtaking. Seeing it each late summer is like seeing an old friend again. It always re-awakens that desire to chase wild things.

If you know, you know.

Stan, your post resonates with me. I tell everyone how much I love late August. There is a peaceful weariness in the air. Summer is still here, but the shadows are starting to lengthen. The late summer wildflowers- ironweed, blackeyed Susans, goldenrod - are peaking. Opening day is just around the corner, and then onto South Dakota pheasants and Reelfoot ducks. When you throw in the Alaska Coho run, fall trout fishing in the Smokies, and, how could I forget, college football, it’s what makes it all worthwhile.

Stanton, in addition to being Georgia prickly (won't go further into the Jawja personality than that), you are also something of a frontier poet and an incipient artist. There is a long known artistic reason for this - 10-30 degrees sun angle creates incredible colors and shadows. The date of course depends on your latitude.

And over the course of 60 years on 4 continents, I've observed that light might be the most striking influence of all - over topography, ethnography.... It's funny, when I pass over the Georgian-Florida border going south - the light suddenly changes.

Sargent painted this over two months posing the children and waiting for just 15 minutes of light at 20 degrees:


Maxfield Parrish and other illustrators knew this.


Myself, the most incredible light color change had to be India-Pakistan in November-February - walk-up hunting quail in the slanting sun in Dec-Jan in Uttar Pradesh in the mustard fields was like walking through gold - and this photo from 1977 in Karachi much faded - the blues were intense as were the golds - doesn't hold a candle to the reality:

It's already started here.

Stan, sweating through the days makes it harder for me to remember what is special about August. As noted, wild flowers appear differing from earlier ones. Jewel weed begins peaking, laying an orange carpet of blossoms for hummers to follow on their migration south towards Central America. Gulf Fritillary butterflies emerge signaling the arrival of spawning redfish off the Ga. coast. Pin-feathered doves alight on the powerlines surrounding sunflower and cornfields prepared for opening day. A late friend, now gone for 21 years at age 63, would tell me more than once that there would be a few unseasonably cooler days in August, reminding us that the fall is but weeks away. When he was in high school in Alabama he was state president of FFA. His dad, a county agent, was noted for introducing terracing in Alabama to control erosion with the aid of an Asian vine, kudzu. Gil

That's IT!

I can't hunt anymore, but I do have a limit of doves living around my feeders. I don't think they are migratory. Even the hummers may stick around this year.

That beautiful golden light, which enriches the colours and seems to increase the depth of the landscape, has often amazed me when driving Eastbound of an evening coming home from a family holiday in the West Country.

all this reminds me of the poem by Keats, called " To Autumn " pardon me for posting this....fall has always been my favorite season


Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

In Maine the swamp maples have begun to turn a bit... not much but enough to get my Autumn juices flowing.