Fall Comes to Upstate

I am driving upstate under overcast skies, in light rain with fog and mist. I pass a red tail hawk on a telephone wire, waiting to drop on the slightest hint of movement in the field below. Most of the trees are bare by now and their black branches are in silhouette against the sky. Fall comes earlier to upstate than it does to Long Island. The weather makes this landscape melancholy, and it is beautiful. I am reminded of Robert Frost's poem "My November Guest" which includes these lines: "Not yesterday I learned to know, The love of bare November days..." I pass this unpaved road which which leads to a farm, it is wet with rain reflecting the sky where the water has gathered in tire tracks. It takes a few moments for the image to register, and I stop some distance down the highway, and back up, so that I can take this photo.