Just as a painter needs light
in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, 
so I need an inner light, 
which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.
~Leo Tolstoy from Reminiscences

I was drinking in the surroundings:
air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers
and greens in every lush shade imaginable
offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow.
~Wendy Delsol

Let’s go I said,
to find some light, but not just any light I said.
Sure he said, let’s go.

He loves to drive winding roads to breathe chill alpine air.

We headed 90 minutes northeast to find what I needed.
The highway empty going up.
Gas tank nearing empty with no time to fill up.
Only a few photographers there, searching too.

What we see from our backyard forty miles away overwhelms
when standing awestruck in its own front yard.

Now my nearly empty tank slowly fills part-way.
This dose of inner light will last me until next autumn.
Overcome, overwhelmed, overpowered
as though it’ll never be enough.