“October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.” – Hal Borland
The morning of our first hard frost found me visiting my hometown for a photo shoot at Sassafras Park, at the start of a little et rail that has afforded many a backdrop over the years – see this red-caped excursion for a delusional gander or this autumnal romp that hinted at danger and left me at the bottom of the little stretch of woods just as the light was draining from the sky – not an ideal place to be with the entire trek back ahead. Fall tempts and draws you in, only to trap and frighten once you succumb.
On this morning, I arrived early – around 8 AM, which is early for me on a Sunday, especially for a drive to Amsterdam. When I entered the trail, I found this magical scene where a tree of yellow leaves was in the midst of dropping them – partly from the colder weather, partly from the dewy frost weighing them down, and partly, I imagine anthropomorphically, because it was just tired of holding onto them. The first thing I do when entering any bit of forest is to listen.
For someone who enjoys the quiet, a forest is one of the finest places to be found. On this day, however, there was an irregular cadence of the softest scratches and lightest thuds as the leaves fell in random, slow non-patterns. No bit of AI or technology could ever precisely predict where each of the leaves was going to fall – far too many variables for the most advanced computer, no matter how quickly it might work all of the physics out; nature would never be found out that easily, and the mysteries of how, when and where a leaf would fall and end up are gorgeously out of reach of man’s greedy hands.
I stood there in the stillness, transfixed by the falling leaves – their sound, their gentle trajectories – like some slow-motion falling of rain, and just as delicately melodic. It was rare to find a tree at the precise moment it was losing all its leaves – I’ve seen them do so in winds or storms – like the cherry blossom petals that would fall into our pool with the April and May breezes. This was different because there was no wind in the atmosphere – just a tree slowly letting go of its finery on the first cold morning of the season. I felt grateful to be there at that particular moment and witness such an elegant disrobing.
