Early November, just after noon on the slow drive down Horse Pasture Road to Lake Jocassee from camp. The light shining through the trees forced me to jump out of the truck, reminding me of a passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature (1850):

"The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently reported spells of these places creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks, almost gleam like iron on the excited eye."