A room with a View...

Tis indeed what I work in. I sit at a desk at one end of a PT gym with tall windows all the way around the walls in front of me and over on the opposite right. Although my view is obstructed in part by this screen, and by the various hulking MedX machines that line the extremities of the room and fill the interior, I still have a relatively clear view of the area surrounding my building.

What is this view? Well. Directly in from of me is a busy parking lot that never stops shuffling with cars, pedestrians, wheelchairs and crutches, an occasional ambulance and stretcher, oxygen truck or Shred-it pick up guy. Beyond that is a tall parking garage that I watched arise right out of the dirt. To its right is the Howard General Hospital that will never complete renovations and an assortment of PODS, trailers and ModSpace storage units. Out the far right side is the new "Medical Pavilion" which houses a rival PT clinic (it has tvs and everything), labs, doctors and the like, and very soon will have an exciting Cafe.

These are the surroundings that I am privileged to be able to see for some 40 hours a week. Most months out of the year the only thing that changes is the size/shape/number of cars... But then, right around late September or early to mid October, something extraordinary happens.

Brilliancy appears.

Charter Drive is escorted along by a sentry row of standard green trees that never seem to do anything but stand there looking... like trees. Our parking lot is hedged in by a low fence of short boxy, dense shrubs that are varying shades of green and brown that go almost entirely unnoticed for most of the year. But then, Fall arrives, and Charter drive and our humble little parking lot become a part of something magnificent. They become beautiful.

The standard boring trees, in mere days, explode in a magnificent representation of sunlight, as the foliage relinquishes its chlorophyll and becomes what it naturally is without it: Yellow.

The low shrubs that sit in an almost sulking row about the lot, stand up straighter and decide to make themselves known. They inhale deeply of the crisp, refreshing breeze, and blush with excitement as they feel its tingle. They ignite in exuberance and turn a brilliant shade of scarlet, no longer content to be a subdued brownish green.

Though I can only see patches of this loveliness, it never ceases to brighten my view for several weeks, and make my drive out like strolling down the red carpet. Fall makes the ordinary magnificent, the drab, the gorgeous and worthy of a long look.

To me, what happens in Fall is a picture of redemption. Something ordinary transformed in a into something extraordinary. Watching leaves change, can be like watching a character change into something beautiful, something you would overlook, now stands apart.

Yep. I love Fall. Thank You Father for the glory of the season.