Fall has fell!

Looks like snow is just over the horizon.  We’ll have some melty stuff tomorrow morning, but by Wednesday, there could be inches sticking to the ground.  I’m gonna miss the fall.  Nothing can bring tears to my eyes as readily as the shimmering yellows on a hillside covered by aspens in autumn.

My father's pursuit of the perfect aspen 'colored' my youth.  Many a weekend in the fall, my dad would grab his camera and his family and drive off in the late afternoon up to the high aspen-rimmed meadows of the Cedar Mountain.  Just to the northeast of Cedar Breaks National Monument we'd park in a meadow and begin our search for the perfect dying aspen.  The tree had to be the absolute epitome of gold and the sky a deep blue above it.  The sky was only right in the direction opposite the sun early in the morning (to the west) or just before sundown (to the east).  We'd all start off in different directions toward one stand of aspen or another.  We'd walk and look and walk some more.  If one of us spotted a possibility, we'd whistle a signal for Dad to come and check it out.  In this way, hours and days of my early life were spent.  Many perfect trees were spotted and photographed; so many that years ago when my mother and I went through old slides to catalogue and store them, there were more than ten carousels of nothing but Cedar Mountain aspens. 

Those early years taught me (without my realizing it, of course) more about light and its effect on color than any of the formal art education I received since.  I also learned to love the variations in light from early morning to night and from season to season.  Perfection is achieved only because of the changes brought about by movement through time.  I'm still trying to gain a better intellectual understanding of this lesson, since I have so visceral a knowledge of its importance.

Now the hillsides above my deck are losing their colors.  The maple reds, oak golds and high aspen yellows are all browning out, leaving drab patches in an otherwise deeply colored tapestry.  I miss them all already.