We have several sorts of fruit trees scattered around our yard, and I have always enjoyed grazing from them when I am out and about. Cherries and even peaches ripen early enough in the season that they can be eaten without any formal acknowledgment that summer is maturing. Like the first pickings of peas, zucchini, beans, and corn, they are welcome signs that the best days of summer are upon us.

Apples, pears, and grapes though are another story. When they ripen it is a sign that summer will soon be gone. At first the fruits have to be hunted up to find the ripe ones, but soon there is more bounty than can be consumed by both man and beast. In the end, there are only a few fruits to be found that are still edible, and then there are none. The last grape I try is sour with fermentation, the last pear tastes earthy, and the last apple is mealy and tasteless. It always seems such a sad ending for the glories of the season.

I do not mean to declare summer to be done, but last Wednesday I set out on what I thought might be the last flight of the summer, but seemed in retrospect to be the first flight of winter. Seeking one last taste of summer I was disappointed with spoiled fruit.

The temperature was unusually warm and there was a strong breeze from the south ahead of a cold front that was moving across the midwest, still a day away from us. One day behind the front, the northern plains were experiencing heavy wind- driven snows. I took off from the hilltop airport in Beaver Dams and promptly bumped the underside of the clouds.

Flying northeast, It was 20 miles before the lower clouds gave way and allowed me to climb to a more reasonable altitude. I had enjoyed skimming past the hills as I followed the valley towards the flatter ground ahead. Visibility was good, and afforded interesting views of the roads, hamlets, and villages just below and the clouds and sky in the distance.

The sky was all tumbled up with the weather changes that were going on. This is the time of the year when the evil demons of the north forcibly wrest the soul of summer from the reluctant earth. It is a sad but spectacular sight to watch; sometimes the forces are equal and there is a calm, and at other times the sky is racked by convulsions as swirls of warm moist air are breached by cold blasts.

I met no such battles until I was about 30 miles from home, on the return flight. I had been watching the skies, and could see areas of rain in the distance all around me. Looking ahead, I could see a curtain of gray from the ground all the way up, and as I moved closer to it, the sight only worsened. Over all, the weather was not bad, but just ahead was one of the places that good and evil had chosen to fight it out.

I had planned to stay on the east side of Seneca and then turn southwest over Watkins, but I elected to cross the lake abeam Dundee and then head south before descending to keep visual contact with the ground. I knew I would appreciate the somewhat flatter and more open land of Reading to the hills of Hector while flying through the weather. For several miles through the rain, I clung to the view of route 14 as faithfully as if I had been driving it in a car, and wondered if my hilltop airport would be buried in the clouds.

To my delight, after a few minutes of flying through heavy rain and mist, I could see the outline of higher hills 10 miles away. I was merely passing through a narrow band, rather than into a large area of rain. The band had marked the position of just one of the day's battle lines. Having passed through the weather from front to back, I entered an area of calm, where the forces had apparently negotiated another truce. The winds had stopped, and the rain had scrubbed the air clean. Small rifts in a mid- level overcast let a few dapples of sunshine splash upon the brown and yellow hills, and highlighted the narrow streaks of cloud that hovered within some valleys.

I didn't do all the things that I wanted to do this summer, but then again, who does? I flew a lot of places, had a lot of fun, and have plenty of pictures to show for it. Just like I won't remember this summer's fruit by the last mealy apple, I won't remember all this summer's tranquil flights by this first flight of the winter season.