As so often in fall, a clear morning sky means not clarity but inversion—the bellowing of trucks. A yellow leaf lands with a soft click.
fall foliage
After a warm night, half the lilac’s leaves are brown and curling. What is it about warmth this time of year that makes it so debilitating?
Most of the edge and understory trees are bare now, and I can see under the oak canopy clear to the crest of the ridge and the sky beyond.
The low clouds are a patchwork of light and dark; the oaks change from brown to burgundy in the space of a minute. A bright curtain of rain.
The crown of an oak that was green on Tuesday now glows orange in the sun. Every breeze shakes a fleet of helicopters out of the tulip tree.
Rising late, I listen to loggers’ chainsaws from over the ridge to the west. The trees are almost at their peak of color. A distant crash.
Cold and clear. Stripes of sunlight don’t distinguish between the gold on the trees and the gold already on the ground: everything glows.
Coming back from the Adirondacks, I find a different mountain: much redder and yellower than it was a week ago, and much less mountainous.