I do not recall the year, and I was either on a short vacation, or perhaps at some work related conference at Western Carolina University. But, it seems that Suzanne Hesseltine and myself were at WCU at some conference, or training, during the summer.

What I wanted to recall was what happened as I was travelling down a straight, wide (perhaps Interstate highway) road, late one sunny fall morning, in the North Carolina mountains. There were tall trees along the right side of the road, perhaps a quarter of a mile. As I passed along this strait, a gentle wind was causing the golden leaves on all of the trees to fall at an angle onto and across the roadway. This was as close to a golden shower of leaves as is possible. And, it wasn’t just one tree’s leaves, but all the trees lining the right side. I don’t recall their being any trees on the left side of this road.

I recognized this as being a special event even at the time it was happening.

I was at Cracker Barrell and noticed an old calendar on their wall. It had a picture of a highway with trees lining both sides, and the trees in beautiful fall colors, yellow & golden. The road I was on in North Carolina was straighter, and I think it was a divided highway, with two lanes in each direction, but on my right side, but they were colored much like those in the calendar photo, and the gentle wind was blowing a bunch of leaves from all the trees as if they were rain, and this golden rain coming down across my car, was filtering the light of a beautiful, sunny, fall morning.