Fall

The trees are in full technicolor swing. The land is slowly dying, and not just because it’s Fall ^[1], we’re also in the middle of a prolonged drought — this year being one of the worst — but this year the leaves are opting for a James Dean-style, leave-a-good-looking-corpse exit. If you’re a leaf and you’ve got to go, do it with class.

Out my back door is a spectrum ranging from ochre to vermillion with all the middle hues as well tucked among the staid green of those that refuse to give and the more russet and mahogany tones of indifferent Oak trees. It’s the beech and maple that really turn though. Almost makes you think of a certain Rush song, but we won’t go there.

Perhaps it’s a result of growing up in Los Angeles, but Fall never ceases to amaze me and I feel a bit bad for those who don’t get to experience it every year. When I worked at the restaurant in Northampton we used to mock the leaf peepers, but we understood why they came.

It’s part of the trade off I guess. My Los Angeles friends aren’t running their heater and still wearing a sweater. It gets cold here, not as cold as New England, but certainly colder than coastal California. But I’ll take the cold in exchange for some tangible markers of the passing seasons, the passing time, lest it simple blur together and slip away invisibly.

Just bear in mind that only part of it is passing. As a friend of mine used to say, the leaves fall for the tree every year, but the tree will never fall for the leaves.

1. 1. To my English friends who will insist on Autumn. I have it on reasonably good authority that Fall is actually proper Queen’s English that fell out of fashion in the UK near the end of the last century. I intend to bring it back because Autumn reminds me of bad paperback romance novels. ↩