Tomorrow is election day. I've already turned in my ballot. (In Oregon, all ballots are mail-in.) I urge you to exercise your civic privilege and vote (unless you're a Trumper, in which case, maybe you can just forget it this time around).
I am writing this blog post now because I don't want to face politics at the moment, as I will have to do, for one reason or another, after tomorrow. I want to write about something beautiful or fun or wonderful.
Like this beautiful world we live in.
In the Appalachians, where I grew up, autumnal glory is in the mass of colors, whole mountainsides vibrating with reds, yellows, oranges, purples, pinks, umbers. In the Siskiyous, the dogwoods turn pink, or, this year, a darker red. The leaves of black oaks and white oaks turn yellow.
The broad-leaf maples turn yellow. The viney maples are sometimes yellow, sometimes fiery red. The alders and willows are light yellow. The ferns are yellow-brown, and vanilla leaf is yellow-green.
The broad-leaf maples turn yellow. The viney maples are sometimes yellow, sometimes fiery red. The alders and willows are light yellow. The ferns are yellow-brown, and vanilla leaf is yellow-green.
Photo by Margaret delll Santina |
Boring? Not at all!
In the Siskiyous we don't say, "Wow! Look at all the colors on that mountain!" We say, "Wow! Look at that spectacular tree!"
Sun-drenched maples glow bright yellow among the dark trunks of the forest,
The delicate viney maple, leaf by leaf turns red on the edges of yellow.
Nowhere are our eyes so dazzled by the colored trees that we can't appreciate the subtler beauties of the autumn forest: the carpet of madrone leaves,
the sap-tipped red scales of a new sugar pine cone,
the patterns in a manzanita trunk,
the reflections of river-bank bushes in the river. Oh, how I have enjoyed walking in the woods this fall!
The delicate viney maple, leaf by leaf turns red on the edges of yellow.
Photo by Margaret delll Santina |
Nowhere are our eyes so dazzled by the colored trees that we can't appreciate the subtler beauties of the autumn forest: the carpet of madrone leaves,
the sap-tipped red scales of a new sugar pine cone,
the patterns in a manzanita trunk,
the reflections of river-bank bushes in the river. Oh, how I have enjoyed walking in the woods this fall!