My Favorite Season

It’s my favorite time of year.  Summer in New Mexico is too hot and I spend my days hiding under the air conditioner.  During spring a ferocious dry wind can blow for weeks, even months, sucking the moisture out of everything living.  Winter is mild, as winters go, but it’s still winter, and I’m allergic.

That leaves autumn, with its brilliant foliage and the arrival of the cranes, geese, hawks, eagles, and ducks that move into the neighborhood.

Most days when I’m at home I run four miles or so on my elliptical trainer— I’d prefer to run outdoors, but my knees can’t do impact any longer.  But this time of year I substitute long walks along the irrigation ditches.

Here are some pictures of yesterday’s late-afternoon stroll, with its long shadows and sunset-colored leaves.  The ditch is dry, as the Conservancy District turned off the irrigation a few days ago, and so the frogs and freshwater shrimp have buried themselves in the mud till next May (assuming they weren’t eaten by the cranes and geese, of course).

That’s one of my neighbors, enjoying the same stroll just ahead of me.

Now here’s something odd.  You’ll notice that these pictures are square.  Up till July every photo I took was rectangular, but some time during my European trip they all began to turn out square, and that was with both my cameras (both Canons).  How did that happen?  Did Canon send out an update?  Did I somehow reset both cameras to produce square pictures?  Or did I accidentally trigger the wrong setting on iPhoto?

What the hell?