The day is beautiful and sunny, but too cold for outdoor dining or back porch sitting. More and more leaves are turning pale gold and more than a few are already on the ground.
One of this season's fawns is having a lie-down and cud-chew in the yard. It has shed the trademark white spots with which fawns are born in late spring and its mama is nowhere to be seen. Now is the breeding season, she's probably off somewhere getting pregnant with next spring's fawn.
This was the season when we bought this piece of property, maybe a week or so later than this in the late 1990s. We saw the For Sale sign, walked up what we later learned was the Naked Lady trail, and were stunned by the beauty of fallen leaves and still golden aspens. We fell in love and bought the lot, if not that day, soon after.
Our driveway is simply that same salaciously named trail, widened slightly and graveled. Basque shepherds once drove their flocks up this trail in the spring and back down it in the fall. They still graze flocks in much the same way across the valley in Idaho.
Aspen trees have paper white bark, with blackish accents. Horny shepherds would carve silhouettes of naked women into the bark of these trees to pass the time, as sheep move slowly.
We were lucky enough to see one of these carvings before the last of the 'decorated' trees, which don't live to be ancient, fell down. Today only the name remains, and few now know of it. It is our little piece of antique local lore.
