Peak Autumn? #phenology

This week most of the oak leaves have turned tawny and bronze-colored. Maples are now chrome yellow, bright orange and scarlet. The black cherry tree's leaves look like flames of burnished copper. The remaining milkweed pods have burst into scattered white spots in the fields of tan and khaki grasses. Autumn winds push falling and fallen leaves back and forth across drives and roads and house decks.

early Autumn snow on maple leaves

Photo by J. Harrington

The dogs are shedding more than usual. Mice are moving into Winter quarters. At least one pocket gopher is still active and pushing up mounds in what laughingly passes for lawn around here. Chipmunks seem to have disappeared, but could it be hibernation time yet? Red and gray squirrels are enjoying the mast fall of acorns. Oak seedlings will emerge next year from oak nuts that were stashed underground and forgotten.

late color change maple leaves

Photo by J. Harrington

Chickadees and nut hatches, both white and red breasted, swarm to the feeders several times a day. Asian beetles, the kind that look like ladybugs, have been flying in swarms through the air and trying to find opportunities to enter buildings. Some remaining hornets are still about after the sun warms them by midmorning.

As we approach Halloween, Samhain, All Hallows Day and the thinning of the boundary between worlds, many of the creatures that live in the North Country get an Urge for Going. We've not yet seen signs of major waterfowl migrations headed South, but expect such on a daily basis. Monarch butterflies are now close to their Wintering quarters in Mexico. We've noticed flocks of Juncos from time to time. If there's such a time as peak Autumn, we must be getting near it.

The technician is coming this afternoon to check the furnace for a heating season that's already started. Soon we'll need to take the snow blower for a seasonal checkup. The reports we saw this morning note this Winter will either be warmer or colder, wetter or drier than average. That sounds about right since many of our weather patterns are getting more volatile. Yesterday it was over 70℉, tomorrow it's supposed to snow. The good news is we have a long list of good books to read while nature takes a quiet(?) Winter rest in the upcoming months. But first some pumpkins need to be turned into jack-o-lanterns.

Leaves

Lloyd Schwartz, 1941

                        1 

Every October it becomes important, no, necessary
to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded
by leaves turning; it’s not just the symbolism,
to confront in the death of the year your death,
one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony 
isn’t lost on you that nature is most seductive
when it’s about to die, flaunting the dazzle of its 
incipient exit, an ending that at least so far 
the effects of human progress (pollution, acid rain)
have not yet frightened you enough to make you believe
is real; that is, you know this ending is a deception
because of course nature is always renewing itself—
        the trees don’t die, they just pretend,
        go out in style, and return in style: a new style.





                        2 

Is it deliberate how far they make you go
especially if you live in the city to get far 
enough away from home to see not just trees 
but only trees? The boring highways, roadsigns, high 
speeds, 10-axle trucks passing you as if they were 
in an even greater hurry than you to look at leaves:
so you drive in terror for literal hours and it looks 
like rain, or snow, but it’s probably just clouds
(too cloudy to see any color?) and you wonder, 
given the poverty of your memory, which road had the 
most color last year, but it doesn’t matter since 
you’re probably too late anyway, or too early—
        whichever road you take will be the wrong one
        and you’ve probably come all this way for nothing.






                        3 

You’ll be driving along depressed when suddenly
a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through
and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably
won’t last. But for a moment the whole world
comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives—
red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion,
gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations
of burning. You’re on fire. Your eyes are on fire.
It won’t last, you don’t want it to last. You 
can’t stand any more. But you don’t want it to stop. 
It’s what you’ve come for. It’s what you’ll
come back for. It won’t stay with you, but you’ll 
        remember that it felt like nothing else you’ve felt
        or something you’ve felt that also didn’t last.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.