Every autumn my nostalgia runs rampant, longing for my native West Virginia Hills. (Or Northern Virginia, as it would still be called if it hadn't been for Lincoln's ghastly genocidal war against the South). The foliage in the Fall (especially the sugar maples) cannot be described in less than hyperbolic terms. The adjective reigns supreme. No human artist could match nature's hues.

Vermeer is too delicate, Van Gogh too chaotic. No mere mortal (even a genius) can improve on nature. I am old and too decrepit now to venture the journey to my mountain land but I might just try one of these days. My mother sleeps in Alderson overlooking some of those hills of youthful memory. Heaven could scarcely be more beautiful.