OCTOBER 6, 2026 – Call me naïve, oblivious to all the dangers stalking the earth as I glide along unrealistically in my own little world. But it’s true: Rather than rant and rave about the state of affairs in the larger world, I’d rather revel in the beauty of my small world as I found it today.
After futzing around with “Wizard of Oz HICS™” (short for “Health Insurance Comparison Spreadsheet”) for much of the morning, I embarked on my daily regimen—a good solid hike to my usual grounds for lots of hill climbs. En route I enjoyed two satisfying conversations; one with a neighbor two blocks down the street and the other with Karl, father of Jill, wife of Dan, two blocks into St. Paul.
Jill and Dan happen to have a place on Grindstone Lake three-quarters of a mile to the east of the Red Cabin. Karl was visiting from Arizona and had been deployed to undertake light yardwork while his daughter and son-in-law were at “work-work.” I stopped to make his acquaintance, and if Karl was reserved and laconic, he was cordial enough to warm to conversation. I remarked about the enormous white pine in the yard, which tree’s majesty had been the springboard for my first conversation with Jill and Dan over a year ago. In the interim, I’d noticed that one of the two white pine saplings near the steps leading from the sidewalk up to the entrance of Dan and Jill’s house had met its demise. The other sapling, however, is still robust and flourishing. When I remarked about this, Karl disclosed that Dan and Jill were worried about the surviving tree; that now it too seemed to be suffering a setback, as revealed by the yellow needles on the portion of each branch close to the trunk.
Without hesitation I allayed those fears, explaining to Karl that this was a perfectly normal aspect of fall’s effect on white pine. I stepped over to the tree, and gently holding the end of a branch with one hand, I softly ran my other hand across the inner yellow needles, which dropped onto lower branches, then the ground.
“See?” I said, brushing off more yellow needles. “This is entirely normal. The rest of this tree’s foliage is nice and green; lush and healthy. Plus, it put on impressive growth this year,” I continued, pointing up at the terminal leader well above my reach. “This tree is in fine shape. You can tell Jill and Dan there’s nothing to worry about here. Soon this lovely tree will be lord of this half of their yard.”
“Good,” said Karl with a sign of relief in his countenance. “I’ll let them know.”
With that I wished him a pleasant rest of his day and visit and hiked on to “Little Switzerland.”
The place was largely devoid of golfers. I could log hill climbs without having to worry about airborne golf balls. As I admired the scenery close and distant, I acknowledged to myself, anyway, my great fortune in being surrounded by samples from nature’s amazing autumn color wheel. The reds were as brilliant as they are anywhere in autumn; the big green leaves of the giant cottonwoods chattered in the occasional gust just as they do among huge cottonwoods elsewhere; as I descended the backside of “Mont Blanc,” the deep blue October sky appeared just as pure as it ever can. In no other time or place did I long to be.
What I marveled at most, however, was the simple fact of my existence and that of every other human being who inhabits the planet; and moreover, that most of us humans have the neurological and emotional wherewithal to apprehend the grand works of nature and to interpret them as “beautiful,” pleasing to a “sense of aesthetics” not shared (as far as we know) by any other organisms—on earth or elsewhere in the knowable universe.
This thought was enough to overwhelm the absence of beauty—no doubt—in the news headlines of the day.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
