It has been a busy week. But then: I feel like that’s true of every week.

Sometimes I make things more complicated than they need to be.

Yesterday I decided to go for a drive into the Canyon to see the foliage before it’s all gone. I don’t remember the foliage in Colorado being as spectacular as it is this year. Don’t get me wrong: it’s always pretty spectacular. But this year it seems more so, somehow. The whole year has been extreme in both wonderful and uncomfortable ways: the unusually warm spring brought way more flowers than I’ve ever seen here before, the summer was the hottest and driest I have experienced in Colorado, and now the Fall foliage is off the hook. The summer sucked: I don’t have air-conditioning. But man, spring and fall have been fantastic. I like flowers and leaves.

The sunsets have been out of control lately as well. Look at this picture my friend Wendy took:

Holy shit, y’all.

These extreme instances of beauty do my heart good. I need beauty every now and then.

As I drove through the canyon, I felt a little bit like the breath had been knocked out of me. I saw my friend and neighbor Jason parked on the side of the road, looking up at a tree covered in leaves so yellow that it glowed, almost appeared to be on fire. I fleetingly thought about stopping to say hello, but I really just wanted to be alone and my guess is that he did, too.

On my way back down I encountered a terrible accident: a man on the side of the road, surrounded by people, someone performing chest compressions, his motorcycle a tangle of metal a few feet away. As I made my way further down, ambulances, firetrucks, and police, lights flashing, made their way up. By the time I got to the bottom, officers had closed the Canyon. There was a line of frustrated motorists.

I suddenly felt very tired.

I went to the grocery store. I bought cereal and peanut butter.

By the time I got home, I was exhausted. I felt like I just wanted to lie down and sleep forever.