In Western North Carolina the leaves are peaking, in many areas they are already past. I have visited this region several times during autumn and, without doubt, the colors are stunning. But now I live here and the eye, like a microscope, always rachets down one or two stops, looking for the intricacies, wanting to know more about the total picture.  So today, a truly glorious day in WNC, I set out from my front door and quickly found the impetus of these thoughts.  It is everywhere around me–the intricacies of life, the turning of the seasons. This maple leaf tells the tale–red, green, brown; cobwebs, mimicking the fabric of space, and insect-produced black holes, portending a deeper being; the red portion looking like a Google map of a subdivision, any subdivision; the brown giving promise to its ultimate future.  “Everything is on its way to somewhere else,” George Malley.  ❧