Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

When the sheets are warm and scrumptious, the outside world is pitch dark, and the sound of pouring rain hums on the skylight, it feels unnatural to get up and begin the day. That’s because it is. The daylight is designed to mark when we rise and how long we sleep, and to go against such a set-up is reckless and foolish, yet we as humans constantly defy what the natural universe tries so desperately to tell us.

We are overly ambitious that way – humans being greedy for more – more time in a day, more light, more work, more money – more, more, more…

And yes, more sleep, because on the morning that this was written, I typed it into my phone in the pitch black of what should have been night, not the start of another work day. Staying in bed was not an option; that indulgence would have to wait until the weekend. We are almost there.

“October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.” – Hal Borland

The morning of our first hard frost found me visiting my hometown for a photo shoot at Sassafras Park, at the start of a little et rail that has afforded many a backdrop over the years – see this red-caped excursion for a delusional gander or this autumnal romp that hinted at danger and left me at the bottom of the little stretch of woods just as the light was draining from the sky – not an ideal place to be with the entire trek back ahead. Fall tempts and draws you in, only to trap and frighten once you succumb.

On this morning, I arrived early – around 8 AM, which is early for me on a Sunday, especially for a drive to Amsterdam. When I entered the trail, I found this magical scene where a tree of yellow leaves was in the midst of dropping them – partly from the colder weather, partly from the dewy frost weighing them down, and partly, I imagine anthropomorphically, because it was just tired of holding onto them. The first thing I do when entering any bit of forest is to listen.

For someone who enjoys the quiet, a forest is one of the finest places to be found. On this day, however, there was an irregular cadence of the softest scratches and lightest thuds as the leaves fell in random, slow non-patterns. No bit of AI or technology could ever precisely predict where each of the leaves was going to fall – far too many variables for the most advanced computer, no matter how quickly it might work all of the physics out; nature would never be found out that easily, and the mysteries of how, when and where a leaf would fall and end up are gorgeously out of reach of man’s greedy hands.

I stood there in the stillness, transfixed by the falling leaves – their sound, their gentle trajectories – like some slow-motion falling of rain, and just as delicately melodic. It was rare to find a tree at the precise moment it was losing all its leaves – I’ve seen them do so in winds or storms – like the cherry blossom petals that would fall into our pool with the April and May breezes. This was different because there was no wind in the atmosphere – just a tree slowly letting go of its finery on the first cold morning of the season. I felt grateful to be there at that particular moment and witness such an elegant disrobing.

My grandmother introduced me to ‘Days of Our Lives‘ at a formative time of my childhood, and ever since getting hooked on the NBC soap operas of the 80’s, a penchant for drama has proved a mainstay of my adult life, much to the chagrin of my preferred internal baseline of calm and peace. I am my own worst enemy – I’m well aware. Whenever I see a sky like this, at the dangerous turn of fall – when weather threatens to overwhelm and fluctuate in roller-coaster form – I thrill a bit, glad for the sort of drama that doesn’t directly involve my own emotions and personal predicaments.

Drama tends to surround me even when I’m not part of it, and the universe has seen to it that not all of my demons have been entirely exorcised. Still much work to be done, probably until the day I die, and realizing that comes with its own sort of peace. The heart and mind work in mysterious tandem; everything unfolds as it’s meant to unfold. Be that stone at the bottom of the river, allowing the water to rush past, ebbing and flowing with time and season, while there is stillness and calm within.

The forests were aflame this weekend, and I got to enjoy a number of different vantage points for leaf peeping. More on that later, for now, the weekly blog recap…

A Monday anemone in fall bloom.

Sometimes there’s too much work and too few minutes, hence this lazy link post.

When green turns to brown, a different idea of beauty emerges.

The overnight pop-up is such a fun guy.

A dangerous sort of stream of consciousness, happening all over again.

The elusive essence of a cowboy.

The lone Dazzler of the Day was Matty Dwyer.

Ride me down easy, as this song goes.

Pink and orange has been more than a fall palette for some of us.

Giving in to peer pressure, this is a hint of Jocktober.

A slightly different kind of rodeo hoe-down.

A rodeo waltz that feels out of time.

Goodbye old paint, as expressed in a song.

Our autumnal trip to Ogunquit began and sustained a sunny note for the majority of its happy duration.

A reprise of the Maine ingredient.

The FALL of the COWBOY: Chapter Three.

Censored and removed from Meta and Threads for ‘adult sexual solicitation’, click here to see the uncensored version.

A dangerous fall hint.

Even poisonous leaves can turn pretty in the fall, but who can say what’s deadly after the first hard frost hits? Fall carries its lurking dangers hidden in morning fog and early darkness. Scarlet leaves may not warn of blood – or they may. You take your chances in the woods, and thus far the beauty has always been worth it.

Worth everything.

“Deliver him this note,” Ma instructed as she pressed the strap of rough parchment into my hand. “Leave it on his door.” They were doing a quick inventory that morning, and they didn’t want me there. They wanted me to learn all the secrets of running the store, but didn’t want me in the way. Another contradiction of growing up in my house. After Ma told us of the Cowboy’s first visit to the store, she decided to make the dinner invitation more formal than usual, but she didn’t want to make the long trek to the Beasleys’ ranch, where the Cowboy had set up residence in their bunkhouse.

“What if he’s there? I can’t just hand him a note and walk away,” I protested, realizing as soon as the words came out how childish they, and I, sounded.

“Then use your mouth and talk,” she said in pointed and arch tone, ending any possibility of further discussion. “Now move, store should already be opened and you know we have to do inventory.”

When she had brushed by and moved to the front of the store, I hastily opened the note to read in my mother’s neatest scrawl an open-ended invitation to dinner, addressed only to ‘The Cowboy’, leaving the option to drop in unannounced and on any day, the way they were always welcoming the cowboys. For some reason, probably at the Beasleys’ encouragement, the cowboys always joined us at least once a week. When I was old enough to argue against sharing meals with strangers, when the adolescent shyness overcame me in those early teenage years, Ma brought out the bible and read about feeding your neighbor or something – only once or twice more did I invite the lesson and bother with attempting to alleviate my social discomfort; at all the dinners I mostly remained silent.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to bring the note to the Cowboy. On this April morning it would be a relief to walk all the way to the Beasleys, which was the furthest home out of town, closer to the rise of the mountains. Ground was more prone to hold water in that section, and being around any bit of green felt better to me than the dry beiges and browns that barely shifted gradation. I also had a feeling that this cowboy was about to teach me something, one of the very first moments of premonition that I’d experience in my life – but on that morning I attributed it to boredom, and the will to make something – anything – happen in that dusty town.

The road to the Beasleys followed the long straight street that ran through the only stretch of earth I’d ever known. It stayed more or less linear until it reached the start of the nearby mountain, at which point it gently curved around said mountain’s base, gradually gaining a little in altitude, when it rounded the northern side. On the hottest days, anyone who was foolish enough to make the trek in the sun was forced to stop at the Beasleys – the ranch was the only thing for miles, and everyone knew them well enough to knock on the door, usually just after they were letting themselves in. Mrs. Beasley always had a pot of coffee on (burned and dregged, as Pa would say) and a pitcher of water at the ready. It was the latter that forced everyone to stop, even if they didn’t care for the Beasleys (because some most decidedly didn’t care for them). In the heat of the desert sun, stopping for shade and water was a matter of survival and sustenance.

On this spring day, the sun was just starting to bother me, so I hurried my steps out of town and around the mountain. By nine o’clock I was sitting across from Mrs. Beasley and delivering the note Ma had sent, at which Mrs. Beasley smiled, folded it back up, then promised to deliver it.

“You came all this way just for that?” she asked. “Your mother should have given it to him when he was at the store – that was only a few days ago…” and she trailed off, waving away a fly that had entered with me.

“Guess she forgot,” I said, looking down into my glass, already emptied of its water. Mrs. Beasley jerked up and traipsed across the kitchen to refill it.

“Your mother’s good to always feed them,” she said. I knew she didn’t mean for it to sound condescending, but it did. I also knew, from what I’d heard between Ma and Pa, that this was why not everyone liked them. It didn’t explain why everyone tolerated them though, aside from the water, and the expansive ranch that kept cowboys in regular employ, as well as a few other hired hands throughout the year. This was where the town got most of its meat too, so even if someone didn’t take kindly to the Beasleys, especially Mrs. Beasley’s flighty airs (which always seemed to me rather benign, and more like an aloofness that was born of distraction than any intended class differentiation) they still had to deal with them. Hunger bends the angriest man to his knees.

As I gulped down the second glass, Mr. Beasley stumbled through the screen door into the kitchen, quite loudly and literally, taking the rickety thing to the ground with him in a plume of dust.

“Will-eee-ummm!” Mrs. Beasley yelled after calming her startled self. “What the HELL are you doing?!”

Mr. Beasley looked up at me from the floor, smiling his round perennially-red-faced smile, the one that disarmed and made everyone wonder even more at the predicament that was Mrs. Beasley.

“Oh hey, Leeeeeve,” he drawled while rolling onto his stomach and pushing himself up with both arms. On all fours, his white hair wildly shooting out in every direction, Mr. Beasley looked like some silly, ghostly pony, the bottom of his pants frayed and fringed from years of wear and neglect, stained and dusty from weeks of not being washed. Looking at the couple, it was almost impossible to connect them with the two people who built this ranch from scratch decades before I was even born; more difficult to place them in any sort of command position of such an operation.

“Leve,” Mrs. Beasley covered cooly, “You can bring your note to… the Cowboy. He’s the only one in the bunkhouse now. Might be out on the other side of the mountains though, if he’s doing what I asked.” She then took my glass before asking if I was done. I detected a sour side-eye directed toward her husband, now bent over the mess of screen and splintered frame in front of him.

Stepping out from the kitchen, one had a vista of land before them, and even then they were only viewing a fifth of the entire property. Behind the main house several large plots of land stretched out, extensively fenced with wooden and barbed wire that ran almost as far as the eye could see. Cattle grazed here and there, while in another fenced area a pair of horses stood lazily trying to keep their cool as the heat of the day brutally ensued, their tails swatting listlessly at flies, their heads hung down, muzzles almost touching, as if in intimate discussion.

Beyond this, the short row of bunkhouses stood, closer to the mountain’s first rise. This is where the cowboys stayed. Sounded like there was only one right now. For April that wasn’t good, but maybe it was a good sign for myself. I stepped off the porch and headed back along one of the fence lines. As I approached the bunkhouse the two horses bolted, spooked by something I couldn’t sense. The sky was cloudless, the air was still down here, but the animals always sensed things in advance, something higher in the sky. Some noise between a neigh and a moo issued from the way I’d come.

Fresh horse prints marked the dry ground as I neared the wooden structure. It was, for the town and time, a decent size for a bunkhouse, opening into one great room, where four pairs of bunk beds were spaced not too closely together – two on each end. In the center of the room a large wrought iron stove took pride of place, beside which a dirty pile of logs stood, probably from several seasons ago, the Beasleys not bothering to keep a cowboy through the winter for as long as I could remember; I was too young to have witnessed when this room was constantly active, when ten to twelve cowboys squeezed into the sleeping quarters on any given spring or summer night. Those stories were kept from me, before I learned not to show interest in whatever I really wanted to hear.

As I neared the front door, which was the only door, I passed a grimy window framed by spider webs and spackled with a sea of dust, thick on the glass, carved by the wind and gentle pull of time. Scant windows and lack of any cleaning always gave the bunkhouse a dim and dark appearance, especially during the day. When I was a kid, I was a little scared of this place – the darkness and the loud cantankerous rustle of the cowboys were such foreign things to me; I was accustomed to the quiet existence of my parents and their whitewashed, stark home. At night, the bunkhouse glowed almost red from the fire, its lone window winking menace and tease, the warmth being necessary on nights that far into the desert, right where the mountain began.

It had been years since I’d seen a fire lit here. Mostly now the cowboys complained of the heat, the way it crept in during the day and made the place stifling until the sun dropped behind the mountain – then it was almost terrifyingly fast in how soon it cooled off. No one complained of the cold during the spring and summer, but I knew there could be frigid nights well into April, and so did the Beasleys, who insisted on the pile of dry logs and the box of long matches by the stove.

Knocking on the door, I leaned in to listen for the tap of boots along wooden boards, or some creaking of a bunk bed to indicate life, but there was only the hum of wind coming off the mountain. I knocked again, then gently opened the door. A shaft of sunlight struck the sooty stove, and already the heat was building. Unfinished wood swirled in knots along the walls and ceiling, the raw exposed beams giving order to the space. The nearest lower bunk was neatly made – it was the only bed that was made; the rest were bare, stained mattresses embarrassingly naked, and rolled up to the headboards. A large leather satchel, scuffed and worn, slouched beside the bottom of the bed. Seeing such things did instill a sliver of doubt in my mind: could I live like this? Could I live as a cowboy? And as soon as the question surfaced, I answered with my full heart: yes.

I backed away from the bed and looked for somewhere to leave Ma’s note. The bed seemed too personal. The leather satchel too presumptuous. Near the door some rusty thumbtacks held up old lists and schedules. I took one and pressed the note into the front door after I shut it behind me. Somewhere around the mountain, or deeper into the desert maybe, the Cowboy prowled. I listened for him, but only the sun made a sound, and it was the sound of the wind.

~ The FALL of The COWBOY ~ Autumn 2026

• The Preamble

• Chapter One

• Chapter Two