The Gold of August

August in New England begins in a blaze.

The sun burns hot, heavy with the weight of summer. Fields buzz with crickets, the air thick with warmth, and the days stretch wide, steeped in fullness.

Yet even here, where summer holds fast, change edges in. By the month’s end, the light softens and slants, shadows lengthen, and the nights whisper of coolness to come. Goldenrod flames across meadows and along roadsides, not as a midsummer fire but as a herald, bright and certain, that autumn is on its way.

In New England, August is both abundance and foretelling: the bold blaze of high summer and the first brush of fall carried together. To notice it is to hold both truths in the same breath, and to let the season’s turning remind us that change begins quietly, beautifully, before it fully arrives.

Photograph: Late August backyard goldenrod, Enfield, NH