Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Autumn comes to the Rims, seen here above Country Club Circle.
Fall starts on Monday, according to the calendar, but if you’ve been out much at all in the past few days, you know that for all intents and purposes it’s already here.
In some spots the signs are subtle, providing just a hint of things to come. In others, it’s like a blazing announcement that the summer of 2014, following the cold, incredibly snowy winter of 2013-14, was pitifully short and officially over.
Still, it was strange to be down at Norm’s Island on the Yellowstone River on Saturday afternoon, alternately staring awestruck at some gorgeous fall scene and then swatting at a mosquito that had just alighted on my arm.
After I’d been at Norm’s awhile, I got back into my car to head home. The radio was on and the first thing I heard was an unfamiliar song but an unmistakable voice. It was Tim O’Brien, and what I heard him singing, in a plaintive voice, was this: “I’m missin’ you darlin’ in the first days of fall.”
It was a song about lost love, but it was as much about the season, when it’s so beautiful out that it just takes your breath away, and then in the next moment it breaks your heart because another year is on the wane and things change and pass away and the beauty is fleeting, as are summers and human lives.
That’s how I felt anyway. There’s some of that, maybe, in the photo above and in these photos below.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News permalink
Along the railroad tracks, near the Billings Depot, seen from Minnesota Avenue.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News permalink
700 block of Poly Drive.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News permalink
Western Heritage Center, Montana Avenue.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News permalink
200 block, South 36th Street.
