Aberdeen and Churchville, Maryland, to New York City, October 5, 2014

★★★★ The cornfields were tall walls of brown, showing traces of pale green in their upper parts. Purple leaves sifted down over the choir where they sat in their vestments on folding chairs; the candle flames flicked back and forth and their glass enclosures swung in the breeze. But still insects were singing somewhere nearby, and red salvia bloomed in the bed along the church, even as the tops of the maples had gone flame-orange and yellow. The impression of stillness held, despite constant activity — the leaves flurrying, swifts or swallows fluttering overhead, light planes buzzing through the clear blue. A big, silent vulture glided right overhead. One of the dogs in the congregation growled under the Prayer of St. Francis. A hermit crab was brought up for blessing, its cage wrapped in a towel against the chill. Gusts kept coming, till the fluttering scriptures and collection made an early and hasty recessional for the shelter of the church proper. The sun on the early accumulated leaves cast a warm glow before the door of the parish hall. A red-shouldered hawk studied the field from a wooden utility pole across the road. Off the edge of the parking lot, the ground was strewn with red apples, and more still hung in the old apple tree. The interstate was open and clear. From the Delaware Memorial Bridge, the view stretched to the tiny Philadelphia skyline clustered in the distance. Fields by the Turnpike were rich yellow in the low sun. The rising gibbous moon was ghostly from New Jersey, but by the Manhattan evening it was sharp and bright.