How they are mixed up, of all species, Oak and Maple and Chestnut and Birch! But Nature is not cluttered with them; she is a perfect husbandman; she stores them all. Consider what a vast crop is thus shed annually on the earth! This, more than any mere grain or seed, is the great harvest of the year. The trees are now repaying the earth with interest what they have taken from it. ”¦ They are about to add a leaf’s thickness to the depth of the soil. — Henry David Thoreau, “Autumnal Tints”
Nature, how capricious you are as you wield your brush, never beginning in the same place two years in a row! First this sugar maple leaf, then that paper birch, and never does your artistic touch dye the same two ever again in colors seen only once in their short lives. For, if all goes well in your world, they will be replaced come spring with new upstarts, straining to burst free from inside their buds, unaware of their fates and of what their mass denouement will be like.
Everywhere I turn this time of year, I see your work and all your year-long efforts come full circle once again, and you never fail to inspire. An oak damaged during a summer storm bends a bit more now, and the tops of poplars having reached the bottom boughs of other trees bend accordingly in search of the sun. Yet, they submit to your wiles, letting you apply a tinge of fall to their willing boughs.
My walks leave me dizzy trying to take it all in at once as the sun sinks slowly below the horizon, setting leaves aglow with all the variations of hues possible across the red-orange-yellow-gold spectrum. The browns and pale yellows of the more stubborn oak leaves break up the riot of fiery shades and tones, and the pines insinuate their ever-greenness into the mix. It’s a kaleidoscope of color, and I don’t know what to look at first or second or last or even where to look at all as I make my way along the paths and lanes that take me deeper into this living palette. I am easily overtaken and readily overwhelmed, brought to a halt at the grandeur and magnificence of it all, much as was Thoreau in the presence of the many tints of autumn that graced his rural and urban Concord surroundings.
It almost, almost makes me long for the fledgling colors of spring, the thick, solid, unbroken masses of summer green and even the vast white expanses of winter. Those seasons do not overtax the eye or the brain like autumn does ”“ autumn, with its eye-catching little vignettes that hold my attention but briefly before something else grabs it, over and over and over again, until I am intoxicated with color, immersed and lost in it, floundering, looking for something to grab hold of before I drown in its richness.
Soon, it will be over again for another year, the memory dimming with the first silver-frosted morning, the branches of trees shivering without their recently shed mantles, the leaves gone home to their natal soil. Nature’s studio session will end, her artistic passion spent, and I will be hard-pressed to recall what sights I saw in her vast gallery before winter drops its icy curtain once again.
— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Lyman, who enjoys exploring the woods of southern Maine, can be reached via email at rachell1950@yahoo.com.
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