This morning I picked up some extra canned goods at the grocery. We're already stocking up for the winter. Being snowed in is more tolerable when the shelves are full.

As I drove home I thought it felt like autumn. I was struck by what I described to myself as the quality of the light. Though the temperature was in the eighties, there was an autumnal look to everything. It's hard to pin down what it was. The sky seemed bigger. The light fell less heavily across the fields and mountains. Maybe it had to do with the angle of the sun, or the thinning of the mostly still green foliage.

Or maybe I felt the onset of autumn because I'd been out preparing for winter. Maybe it was the scattered yellow in the trees, tipped me off, the stray leaf skittering across the highway. Or maybe it was just the calendar. Nothing to do with any sunlight angles at all.

Then again, it might have been some primitive internal clock we humans still have that senses things we can't quite identify rationally and tells us it's time to buy large tins of tomato sauce and extra bottles of curry powder.