"...No one but you had sufficient audacity and eyesight to find those clearings where the shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons..."
-from Prospero To Arieln, by W. H. Auden (1907-1973), Selected Poems, page 139
And isn't that one of the glories of autumn, that the benevolent sun beams through rusts and imperfections, these hallmarks of transformation, morphing the subject into a thing of bright beauty. And, oh what we miss when we credit these as anything less.
A rather fitting rabbit trail of thought on Remembrance Day, that arrives at thankfulness.
"The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled."
- Henry Adams 1838-1918)
What a relief to finally be past that last season - the seemingly never-ending, agonizingly rife-with-drama-and-petty-accusation election season, that is.
Here's to unfettered enjoyment of the remaining glorious weeks of autumn!
You may be educated in interesting terminology when you show your slightly odd photos to select people at the office ("select" being those who do not have small children and/or a puppy, so as to avoid, er, generous reciprocal photo sharing of images that actually include people in the photos - Egad! What are they thinking!).
Per my ex-military colleague and FireArmsID.com, the curving pattern visible in today's photos (and in James Bond movie intro footage) consists of "...lands & grooves. The lands are the raised areas between two grooves. A rifling pattern of eight grooves with also have eight lands. Firearms can be manufactured with any number of lands and grooves in their barrels. They can also spiral either left or right. A few of the more common rifling patterns are 4/right, 5/right, 6/right, 6/left, 8/right, and 16/right."
This view is from the back of a Civil War model 1861 3" ordnance rifle, manufactured 1861, serial #15, muzzle-loader, which was converted to a breech-loading salute gun.
Hayes and Amalia Otoupalik donated it from their collection, in memory of his twin brother, Josef Otoupalik. Head on over to Fort Missoula to take a look for yourself and read the rest of this item's history. The weather is still lovely for brisk meandering.
"The sky was a brilliant blue, falling to the earth around them.
Sometimes he had the illusion here, on the plains, that he was moving through the sky."
- from Shadow Dancer by Margaret Coel, page 3
