I am always keeping my eyes open for that first suggestion of autumn. I spend my summers in Maine, and come August, just three short months after the trees begin to leaf out in spring, there are always a few maples with branch tips beginning to flare red. It seems a bit curious to be swimming in a small lake while trees bordering its shores are already exhibiting the first flashes of color bespeaking the colder temperatures and cooling waters that can’t be that far off.
September is the month when one feels what Truman Capote called the “first ripple chills of autumn,” when the fall colors arrive in earnest in northern New England. The first to turn are the swampmaples and popple in low wet areas. Then come the various shades of reds, oranges and russet among the red and sugar maples, scarlet oak, and sumac; the ash trees’ deep purple; the yellows among the popple, birch and willows; and finally the more subtle tans and browns among the oak, beech, and sycamore. With these early chills the color increases almost daily in its proportions and brilliance. The leaf peepers also arrive around mid-month; they come, they look, and they are gone again by mid-October. They have little understanding of the full evolution of a northern New England autumn. It’s too bad they are unable or unwilling to experience its entire range and spectrum, from the onset of color as well as its evanescence. I honestly believe that autumn in no more colorful, nor more awe-inspiring than it is in these northern climes. For this reason alone I always try to postpone my annual trip south until after the autumn colors have reached their zenith.
With the onset of the killing frosts of October the season is better disposed to the arrival of winter. Cold rains will mute the colors, and as they fade, the leaves will quickly forsake the trees and fall to the ground much too soon. Not all of the leaves will fall, however. A few drained of their color will continue to flutter through the stiffening gusts of winter. No surrender. It is not uncommon for snow to fall by Halloween, first at the higher latitudes and elevations, but quickly enough snow is common place when November arrives. The leaves are raked against foundations for insulation as houses and out buildings are tucked up for the winter. The calendar may say it’s still autumn, but our senses tell us something different. Truly a touching end to the briefest and most poignant of seasons.
