I hope you had a great weekend. I did. I went to Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park for some leaf-peeping. The recent unseasonably warm weather left the scenery with more green and less red, orange, and yellow than I would've liked, but in the presence of such natural beauty it's unreasonable to complain about the exact wavelength of light at which such a gift presents itself. One highlight of the trip was Bear Fence, which requires a short but tricky scramble up rocky terrain. It reawakened climbing skills my ancestors honed over the millennia and had passed on to me but which I don't get to use at the office. Bear Fence rewards climbers with a 360-degree view for miles in every direction. When we got to the top, we were the only ones there; no other people could be seen or heard anywhere. Although this heightened our ability to reconnect with nature, it also made me wonder where everyone else was. Had the rest of the world discovered some activity more enjoyable than this, and they were all out doing it right now? By the time we were ready to head back down, about twenty others had joined us at the top, and a tiny sliver of my faith in humanity had been restored.