A number of years ago, in late fall, I spent almost a month boating the Colorado River and hiking the side canyons and the desert terrain of the Grand Canyon. I was part of a small group on a commercial trip put together by my daughter and some of her river-running friends, who had “lucked out” in obtaining a hard-to-get private permit (a cancellation by another party who had waited for two years to get a permit provided that opportunity). Most of the group were former river guides on this river and thus knew the best side of the canyon hikes. They knew also the trails to the oasis villages, where Indians still dwell as they have for centuries. They knew the location of closely guarded secret hot springs and, best of all, they were equal to the river’s many formidable challenges – a help to this writer’s big water abilities.
From our put-in at Lee’s Ferry on the Utah/Arizona border to our take-out at Mile 225 at the Hualapai Indian Reservation, 15 miles from upstream Lake Mead, it was a wonderful and memorable trip; the desert, the canyon and the river were truly beautiful. The strange thing was, that for all its beauty and excitement, as the days wore on, I had a nagging concern: I was going to miss the wonders of our Adirondack autumn! Here is the time when the whole Tupper Lake area explodes in color when for a tantalizing short while, two weeks or so, the Adirondacks are arguably one of the loveliest places on earth, and hey, I wasn’t going to be there.
My partner in our dory was originally from New Hampshire, and he admitted to the same concern, even as he would not admit that the fall display in the Adirondacks was at least equal to that of his New England countryside.
We did agree that the Northeastern landscape provides a setting that no other area of North America can rival. There is a variety in its trees that few other areas achieve. A contrast of beech, maple, sumacs, and poplar that dazzle the senses. Every hillside splashed with sharp shades of all sorts of color, flaming scarlet, lustrous gold, throbbing vermillion, fiery orange.
Younger readers may raise their eyebrows at my concern in missing a single season of fall foliage. The reality is that, as you get older, each such season becomes more important. Call it a milestone, if you will. Older folks treasure such milestones perhaps because they realize that there may not be that many left.
The thing is, we don’t get to invert the hourglass that contains the sands of our time on earth. Each grain, as it falls through the glass clicking away the time we have spent in this world and the time remaining, is an inflexible finality that no one escapes. Is it no wonder that people by the bus loads (largely senior citizens, affectionately called “leaf peepers” by us locals) travel hundreds of miles to view the unique wonder of our autumn season.
We are blessed here in the Adirondacks with a perfect balance when our climate in the fall, with its crisp, chilly nights and warm sunny days as experienced this week, bring all the deciduous trees to a coordinated climax.
As Bill Bryson, author of I’m a Stranger Here Myself, puts it, “What is all the more remarkable about this is that no one knows quite why this all happens.”
He explains that, “in autumn, trees prepare for their long winter’s slumber by ceasing to manufacture chlorophyll, the chemical that makes the leaves green. The absence of chlorophyll allows other pigments called cartenoids and xanthophyll, which have been present in the leaves all along, to show off a bit. These pigments are what account for the yellow and gold of birches and beech trees, among others. No one knows why the trees do so when they get nothing evident in return.”
Well, Bill, the trees may not get anything in return, but we most certainly do. It is my hope that everyone reading this column is allowed to view many, many more autumn seasons. A time when the summer bursts into a million glowing tints, heralding yet another milestone and reaffirming that Tupper Lake is a wonderful place in which to live and grow.