A recent drive through the Willamette Valley was filled with reflection as it often is. Memories popped up and passed as quickly as the farms and my favorite stand of trees.

Naked sheep grazed on clean-shaven blond fields. Miles of cocoa colored soil dotted sparsely with barns and hemmed with a gold green ruffle of trees warming to the shades of the season. A cottony canopy of clouds heavy with rain, and dropping some along the way, made the vast scene seem cozier than in summer months when purple-blue mountains touch an azure sky.