Autumn Is A Season For Gypsies...

                                             
                                                    
                                                                       

                           "Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting,
                             and autumn a mosaic of them all."
                                                                                               --Stanley Horowitz

 "... autumn brings a longing to get away...out into the forest at night with a campfire and the rustling leaves."                                                        
                                  --Margaret Elizabeth Sangster, 'The Gypsy Spirit'


Autumn is a season for gypsies... The crisp morning air stirs our blood, and awakens the wanderlust deep in our souls. The sky above our heads is a cool clear blue, sharply pierced by honking geese as they make their journey south; they, too, long to get away...   The trees along the winding roads are adorned in bright gypsy hues -- shades of red and russet and gold.  Leaves fall, merrily spiraling their way to the ground-- gypsy skirts in the autumn wind...
                                                                                   

    
Nearby, our campfire burns cheerfully, its wispy fingers of smoke ever reaching skyward. The smell of burning wood is sharp in the morning air... I stand with coffee cup in hand, feeling unnamed anticipation --I know not of what.  Yet still I wait, eager and impatient... My eyes are drawn to the sun-dappled horizon, where the  narrow dirt road fades into the distance.  Like a siren's song, the open road calls to me-- a primordial urge to wander the land, an ancient longing to follow rippling streams and  transverse verdant  pastures--and suddenly I know.  It is This that I wait to hear... 
 
                              

Deep in the forest, a bear obeys Nature's stern command, and readies himself for a long hibernation.  At the forest's edge, a squirrel hears Nature's urgings, and scurries to hoard nuts for the winter. On the lake, geese heed the call of Nature, and head south to warmer climates.   We hear the call as well...But gypsies and  nomads are not welcome in our world--and so we deny the call of the wild, the lure of the open road.   We stifle the urge to wander; instead, we sit by our fires, and dream of a freedom that is no more...  
                            
                                                                        

   
"It's a far distant country from whence my people once roamed
where the heather grew rich and the roads were our own
there were folks you could trust and a song you could sing
when the meadows were sweet there and the church bells did ring."

                                                         --Ray Willis, The Gypsy Poet