For the past two weeks, I have covered thousands of miles by plane and hundreds by car as I traveled for work. Everywhere, autumn has been in full evidence …
Staunton, Virginia: yellow fields, mostly still-green tree leaves, a daily high temperature that dropped twenty degrees from one day to the next, the chilly rain that locals joked I had brought with me from Washington …
Asheville, North Carolina: a burning red fluorescent sunset, someone else’s bear sighting that we hoped to enjoy ourselves, hot days/cool nights, a warm light rain that adorned the maple leaves with pearlescent jewels …
From the air: rust-colored blankets with pinpricks of yellow broken only by the massive snow and ice-covered peaks of local volcanoes as I flew back in to my Pacific Northwest homeplace …
My island in the Puget Sound, Washington: home sixteen hours and the leaves that were green or spotty when I left have primarily given way to foliage that is red, orange, and deeply-inspiring gold …
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: red fields, yellowing trees, heavy rain, dark gray clouds in which imaginations take hold, a place so familiar in our shared Northwest geography …
And then as I retraced the pathway of my recent travels, I suddenly remembered the incredible series of books I read more than thirty years ago by a prolific naturalist, photographer, Pulitzer-prize winner: Edwin Way Teale. For the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, Mr. Teale studied, traveled, and wrote about natural history and the environment across America. As a way to deal with their grief upon the death of their son in World War II, the Teales began taking long seasonal sojourns by vehicle. These tens of thousands of miles resulted in four books documenting the seasons across the country – changes in landscapes, animal behavior and migrations, temperature variations. The first one with which I became familiar is “Autumn Across America.” (He also wrote: “North with the Spring,” “Wandering Through Winter,”and “Journey into Summer.”) Over the past twenty-four hours, I have become desperate to reacquire these now out-of-print tomes. Naturally, I hope to reclaim the autumn one first.
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Returning home again late yesterday, I notice that yellow fills in the negative space between the hairy triangles of fir trees and every window provides the perfect frame for nature’s paintings. The clarity of early morning light after a black night of rainfall highlights the juncos’ and sparrows’ leaf-falling imitation as they rapidly dive downward in cascading arcs of wakefulness. The blueberry bushes bear their most delicious treat: fiery, orangey-red drops of wet color. As I write this, a breeze ripples through wet tree leaves and the upper boughs of my beloved friends - hemlock, Doug fir, and alder – tip northward in homage to invisible gods of the season. So do I.
(Orig. posted in Oct. 2019)
