Latest Autumn

 The yellows are fallen and browned. A few stubborn dark leaves, chiefly oaks, hold on.

I lived in a little town in central Pennsylvania until I was nine. I loved the rolling hills surrounding our little Susquehanna River valley. To me, after the leaves fell, the hills were covered with soft brown fur. As I grew older I realized that my impressionistic view was a fantasy. Bare tree limbs and twigs catch your jacket and scratch your face. But the childish fancy won't give way to reality. The sight of a late autumn wood is comforting and cozy.

My oldest cousin, Lola, owned a sugar beet farm in eastern Montana and we visited them in 1995, the summer of our cross-country trip, after stopping at my Dad’s old stomping  grounds in Choteau County and Fort Benton, Montana.

Lola and her husband Dick were gracious hosts. They took us in their pickup truck to view the sugar beet fields and their oldest son gave my kids rides on his horse.

Their oldest daughter had moved to West Virginia. She was quite homesick and one day called Lola and said, “Mom, the leaves have all fallen off the trees. It is so ugly here!”

Because of that report I have pondered late autumn. It would be a shock to first experience an Eastern late autumn in adulthood. I’ve grown up with them. I love the contrasts and the continual change in color and texture all through the year.

Out my kitchen window I see trees, a few small ones in the foreground and a large maple tree a block to the north. It has a pleasing rounded shape and I’m reminded of a poem I once wrote. I visualized my brain, which had failed me so utterly, as a large deciduous tree with thousands of branches and twigs. My marvelous brain, for all its failings, was as glorious as a mighty oak.

I’m very proud of the fact that I can say and even spell deciduous. I’ve often felt it was a pretentious adjective for such a familiar object. I just learned that it comes from the Latin: to fall down or off. So prosaic.