It’s That Time of Year…

Autumn, aka “Fall”.

I lived in the same house from the time I was born until one day in 2004.  Nearly 20 years.  I never appreciated my surroundings because I saw them every single day and it was what it was.  Besides, I was busy being young and stupid.

I went off to the Army that day in April ’04 and found myself in South Carolina.  I was kinda busy while I was there, and I never really got the opportunity to look around.  July 1st I left the East coast for Arizona.  I arrived at 1am.  It was dark.  I woke up the next morning and walked outside to be surrounded by one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen in my life.  Sierra Vista, AZ.  It’s a pretty crappy little town, but gorgeous none the less.  It looked very similar to this:

I was from the East coast and had never travelled far enough away to see anything like this.  I live in the Appalachian Mountains but .. they do not compare.  They’re hardly mountains.  THESE – are mountains!!

Every night the sun set, and it looked like this:

Every single night the sky burned red.  Needless to say, I was very very sad to leave in November.  I was off to Texas.

I can sum Texas scenery up in one picture:

BORING.  I’ve “lived” in TX since Dec 1, 2004.  It’s getting old quickly.  You never hear anyone talking about the beautiful TX scenery.  If there is any, I haven’t seen it.  But I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder or some shit.

I say “lived” because in 2006 I lived in Baghdad.  I didn’t get out much, but I didn’t mind.  Because out looked like this:

Dead bodies and all.  Kinda glad I got to skip out on most of that.

Anyway, let me get back to the point.  Today, I went to work.  Work was in the middle of Nowhere, PA. Until today I thought that the red mountains in AZ were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.

They really look much redder in real life!

I’d just never really looked at Pennsylvania autumn before.

That last pic is of a “Burning Bush”.  I don’t know what they’re really called but this picture doesn’t do it justice.  They are so red you can pick one out on the side of a mountain.

Anyway, I almost wrecked my car today a few times trying looking at the fall scenery.  It’s just funny to me that I’ve lived here almost my entire life, and yet I never really saw what was right in front of me. My husband is in Iraq (again) and came to visit us in April, just as the trees were turning green, and he was amazed at how beautiful Pennsylvania was.  I told him how much prettier it was in the fall, and yet I had forgotten myself what it looked like.

When I head back to Texas this winter, maybe I will find some beautiful scenery that I had never noticed before.

I doubt it.

*All pics are from Google Image Search except for the Pennsylvania pictures, which come from http://www.fallinpa.com – Also the red mountain picture is from John @ http://www.gemstoneartist.com (sorry!)