Today is officially the first day of fall.

There are certain things I wait for every year without realizing just how much I have missed them. The first morning when the air feels different against my skin. The first evening when summer finally releases its grip and I can reach for a hoodie without regretting it. The first leaves that begin to turn, almost quietly, as though the trees are keeping a secret from the rest of the world.

Fall has always been my favorite season.

Maybe because I have always understood something about the beauty of things changing.

There is something about autumn that feels honest. Nothing stays green forever. Nothing holds its shape forever. The trees spend months growing, reaching, becoming, and then, when the time comes, they let go. They do not try to hold onto summer. They simply become something else.

And I think I have always loved that.

But when I think about fall, my mind does not first go to South Dakota.

It goes to the mountains.

It goes to Crossroads.

Fall at Crossroads was something I could never quite explain to someone who had not stood there and watched it happen. The mountains did not simply change color. They seemed to change entirely.

At first, it was subtle. One tree would begin turning at the edges, a little yellow or orange appearing among the green. Then another would follow. Every time you walked outside, something had changed. A different branch had turned. A different hillside had begun to glow.

And then, somehow, you would look up one day and realize the entire mountain had become autumn.

Red and orange and gold stretched across the hills as far as you could see. The trees seemed to catch fire beneath the afternoon sun, but there was nothing destructive about it. It was beautiful in the quietest, strangest way.

I could have stood there forever.

I loved the way the air changed when fall came to the mountain, too. It was still that familiar mountain air, clean and fresh, but there was a coolness woven through it now. Mornings felt sharper. Evenings came with a chill that made campfires feel necessary.

There were nights spent outside beneath the darkening sky, with smoke curling upward and sparks disappearing into the darkness. There were leaves scattered across the roads and paths, the sound of them beneath your feet, and mountains disappearing into shadow as the sun went down.

It felt like the whole place was breathing differently.

And now, looking at this photograph, I realize how much I miss it.

Not just the colors.

Not just the mountains.

I miss the feeling of being there.

I miss knowing that I could turn a corner and suddenly find myself surrounded by more beauty than I knew what to do with. I miss looking up at those mountains and watching the season move across them. I miss the cool air and the smell of woodsmoke. I miss the way autumn seemed to settle over Crossroads and make everything feel a little more alive.

There are places that become tangled up with pieces of who we are.

You leave them, but you do not really leave them.

They stay in photographs. They stay in memories. They hide in certain songs, certain smells, certain kinds of weather. They come back when the leaves begin to change and you suddenly find yourself remembering a road you have not driven in years.

Crossroads is one of those places for me.

And perhaps that is why this photograph feels like more than a photograph.

It is a road covered in fallen leaves.

It is a building beneath the mountain.

It is a sky I remember.

It is a season I loved.

It is a place I miss.

I know fall will keep coming whether I am standing on that mountain or watching the seasons change here at home. The world will keep turning gold. Leaves will still fall. The evenings will still grow cold. Somewhere, someone will light a campfire beneath an October sky.

But there will always be a part of me that remembers what autumn looked like at Crossroads.

There will always be a part of me standing somewhere on that mountain, looking out at all those colors and thinking, I wish I could keep this.

Maybe that is why I take photographs.

Because I know nothing stays.

The leaves fall. The seasons move on. Places change. People leave. Years pass.

So I take the picture.

I keep a little piece of the moment where I found it.

And every September, when the air begins to cool and the first hints of autumn return, I find myself thinking about that mountain again.

I miss it.

I miss Crossroads.

And I think I will always miss fall there most of all.

Happy First Day of Fall! 🍂