I’m feeling unsettled today, though I’m not completely sure why. Maybe it’s the unending days of dreary, gray weather where I live. Not cool weather, which this runner would welcome, but dreary and humid and warmer than it should be for this time of year.

Maybe it’s too many pieces of unexpected news and delays and bothers and too many Christmas catalogs piling in the mailbox too soon.

Maybe it’s because I’ve come back to reality after a wonderful time away with my husband. We visited a land of sunshine and leaves changing and beauty all around us and came home to gray all around.

Is it gray where you are? Or are you feeling a bit unsettled today? Care to escape for a short time? Then I hope you’ll pause and rest a few moments here and let these photos restore you.

Do you know one of the things I love most about Fall? It’s a time to look up and look far but also to look closely at detailed beauty. It’s a time drenched in blazing color.

And extra this week, some links that are restoring me:

• A blogger I follow (and happen to have a crazy-serendipitous-in-a-good-way childhood connection with) is sharing “31 days of noticing,” and here in the middle of it, she stopped me dead in my tracks, as she was stopped dead in her tracks by book art that everyone around her merely passed by.
• How could I not share this fabulous video of Jon Stewart interviewing Malala Yousafzai? I got on a soapbox about her shooting last year, and this beautiful young woman is taking on the world – and not backing down to the Taliban – after her recovery. Oh to be sixteen and that brave and amazing.
• You know me. I’m a sucker for a good marathon story, and Chicago’s course record fell this past Sunday.
• You need more than those three? Go back to bullet two and repeat as needed.

Did I miss something you came across in the past week that restored you? Feel free to share it below by leaving a reply.