Michigan leaf

After living in northern Illinois for the past 16 years, I had forgotten how beautiful autumns were in central Michigan. Nine days ago, on the morning my father died, my wife and I drove at sunrise to the hospital about a dozen miles from the small town where he had lived nearly all of his 71 years. The first sunlight of the newborn day played on rolling hills - the space between them creating beds in which blankets of fog lay tucked between patchwork quilts of gold and red. The scenery was achingly beautiful.

This leaf was captured on film subsequent to that beautiful Michigan autumn morning, its shape mimicking the outline of the state that I called home for more than three decades.

And, as I discovered over the course of the last several days, it's still home.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2007 James Jordan.