In San Francisco there is a peculiar kind of sunlight that only shows up in September and October. It is clear and bright, but somehow also dry and cool, unrefracted by fog or haze. Last autumn Mabel Watson Payne would have been too little for playground visiting, but this year she wants to spend as many hours as she can finding leaves in the sand and and swinging on the swings and climbing on the climbers and digging holes and finding bright-colored treasures that other people might call trash.
