Last weekend my wife and I went to a beautiful public garden in the Raleigh Hills neighborhood of Portland.  A crystal clear blue sky and the autumn foliage was at its height.  While Phyllis inspected the garden I sat on a bench (I tire easily nowadays sad to say) and looked at the tall trees with their myriad leaves, blowing in the golden wind.

The political season is upon us and there is a financial battle being fought simultaneously: maybe the first world war where everyone is one the same side and the enemy we are fighting is a devil of our own devising...  Late nights, many of us are watching the glowing screens and seeing the openings of the bourses from Australia to Japan to China; what happens there will effect the EU and then us here.  Others of us are watching the poll numbers jump and shift.  Quiet contemplative tasks: seeing the washes of photons that derive from distant battles that will shape all of our lives with tremendous finality.

My favorite place in the world is the Beartooth Plateau.  Hardly a year goes by when I don't visit.   The wind whistles up there and the air is icy cold when a rock wall shuts off the sun. There is an upland meadow at about 3000 meters that I love especially.  If you drive the Chief Joseph Highway and, reaching the pass, look northwest, you will see it: a vast table in the sky.

The tumult of this autumn never reaches that place, just the wind whistling in the little stands of trees that punctuates the grass expanse.  One can look south toward the Sunlight Basin from there and see the austere peaks rising...what does it mean to them that we are entering a new age...perhaps a golden age at that?

I am weary, feeling my age multiplied by illness and responsibility, seeing the changes coming, and knowing how much distress they will cause some on the short term. But the Plateau endures and so shall our species; we are contemporaries after all, and all this tumult is so much wind, so many fleeting photons ghosting through the ringing air.

Obama shall surely win and become one of the greatest presidents this country has ever had. And simultaneously with our country's fall from haughty financial power, may come a new golden age where a great and lasting peace will be shared by all.

Such is my hope and prayer and I contemplate these things late nights as markets tremble in the balance, and the world waits to see what our choice will be, and the eternal winds blow the trees in my city park and those up on the plateau of all of our hopes.