Earthy Artifice of Autumn

     It's easy to remember, every spring, how beautiful the woods can be with the colorful glory of wildflowers under the trees and in the meadows. But I forget, every autumn, that while alders and maples hog the spotlight with their fiery yellows and reds overhead, deep on the dark forest floor another kind of flora is pushing up through mud and leaf mold to spot the earth with color. Mushrooms are autumn's answer to spring's wildflowers.

    Whereas spring bursts into bloom with neon intensity, mushrooms take hues more appropriate to the woods and to the closing days of autumn—cantaloupe, mauve, leaf-brown, pumpkin—but they are no less startling for having more subtlety. And, anyway, sometimes they aren't so subtle. Slick, white mushrooms are such a contrast with the black soil of their birthing bed they elicit exclamations equal to those emitted at the sight of a field of lupine at the base of a snow-capped mountain.

An amanita, red with white spots, round as a dessert plate; those large, yellow, spongy-looking mushrooms; the little brown ones running around on the ground like a flock of baby birds—purple mushrooms, blue ones, orange ones—the hues are the same names as those we give to wildflowers and maple leaves, but the chroma is in keeping with autumn: earth-toned, tinged with melancholy, akin to decaying leaves and clouded skies. Beauty of a different kind.

    A walk through the woods in November reveals a marvel of variety: curly edges, concave cups, perfect circles, smooth and shiny tops, scabby tops, frilly fans. How did mushrooms manage to find such different ways to present themselves? I kneel to pay homage to the strength of a mushroom as it shoulders its way through dirt, pushing aside rocks and roots, ignoring vines that want to hold it back. Here they come! The mushrooms! Thrusting up from the underworld, full-formed—no need for roots to dig in and leaves to photosynthesize. Here they are! The mushrooms!

Under a Roof of Birds

    I was walking through the woods last week when I thought I saw a movement ahead of me. I stopped and peered through the trees. But wasn't that a blackened tree stump I thought had moved? I was walking through a part of the forest that had been underburned a few years ago, so burned stumps and logs are common. Then the blackened tree stump jumped up and ran up a tree—a bear cub, in the exact place I had seen him and his mom and twin sister a few weeks ago.
    "It's all right," I called. "Don't worry. I'll take another trail. Have a good day," and I turned around and walked a different direction.

    After a short walk I had cause to thank the bear cub for turning me in a different direction because on that new trail I was suddenly under a roof of birds, twittering, chattering, chirping in the trees over my head. The musical commotion held me captive. The birds weren't singing and whistling; they weren't making melodies. They were telling stories, and I was privy to their gossip. From time to time one would flit to a perch in a different tree. Another would flutter to another perch, then another bird to another tree. They chattered like girls at the Coco-Cola parties of my teenhood. Occasionally the rasping call from a distant crow or Stellar jay would add perspective to the aural experience—outside the room of birds—but nothing disturbed the gorgeous color of sound that saturated the air around me. It was like standing under a rainbow.

    Suddenly, with no discernible provocation and with a rush so loud it startled me, the whole flock whooshed out of the trees and flew northward. I was left with the silence of the forest again. 

    What a privilege it is to be in such a world. 

When the Trees Turn Gold

Suzanne Simard tells us that the Mother Tree cares for her offspring,nurturing them, feeding them, warning them. It sounds a lot like love, so it's hard not to credit the trees with other emotions, too. It's hard not to think that the trees in Southern Oregon have expressed their joy at rain and a nip of cold this autumn by bursting into color.

Don't you, when you are overjoyed at something, burst into song? Maybe bursting into color is the equivalent response to joy from the maples and oaks of southern Oregon. And if that's the case, we might see that the trees are particularly happy for all the wonderful rain that has fallen in the last two weeks, because the maples have been a richer, deeper yellow than ever,

and the dogwoods, usually so demure in their pinks, have blushed almost red,

and the scrub oaks have grown exuberant in bronze, yellow, scarlet,burnt orange, and maroon, all in one tree.

Vine maples also go wild with different hues in one tree and even on one leaf.

You probably think this is a case of psychological transference, that because I am full of joy at the abundance of color in the maples, oaks, and dogwoods this autumn, to say nothing of being overjoyed at the rain itself, I transfer that joy onto the sentient trees. But I assure you it is the other way around, that walking under the maples transfers joy to me. Like sending nutrients to their offspring through mycorrhiza, the trees send their autumnal joy to me through the air we share and that, indeed, they so abundantly provide.

(Another expression of joy in the mountains this autumn.)