Fall in New England

This year Fall has arrived quickly, as if someone forgot it is supposed to happen at this time of year and quickly accelerated events to accommodate the season – dropping temperatures and coloring leaves and adding snap to the air.

On a drive to Bennington, Vermont about ten days ago, only minor splotches of color were dabbed on the hills. By a week later, the hills (the Taconic and Berkshire Mountains) had succumbed to serious coloring. Strangely trees are dropping their leaves nearly as soon as they've changed from green to rust, gold, reds or some combination. The lawn is already littered catching wonderful colors on the too long grass. Within a day or two, the colors fade and brown, curl and begin to crumble. Apparently early leaf dropping is due to drought. Some lesser lucky trees had brown leaves which fell to the earth in mid Summer. Hopefully, they all will survive to see another Spring.

In living in the North East, Fall is a season which every Yankee anticipates and enjoys. Perhaps our collective dread of the impending cold, wind, snow and freezing Winter temperatures is part of what makes this time of year all the more significant. It's hard to say. But many of us could not live here (or anywhere else) without an annual downsizing of the long days of Summer into a prolonged and beautiful Fall. We count on it to nourish us until Spring. It's said a true Yankee's blood is part orange, gold, rust and red.

The leaf peeping trade depends on the colors of Fall invading our landscapes. As wood stoves begin to send their woody smells into the air, and the pick-ur-own apples signs go up at the orchards, and the country stores begin to offer cinnamon spiced hot cider, fresh apple pie, apple butter and apple sauce...it is impossible to not stop and sample the fruits of the countryside. The bonus is the jams and jellies and maple syrup and maple fudge and apple donuts...with gourds and pumpkins and mums and late sweet corn and fresh large beefsteak tomatoes and heads of garlic nearly as large. The harvest is never so sweet as when you can chat with the farmers who are supplying your table.

Quintessential New England towns such as Stockbridge, Mass, just over the state line offer themselves as what a proper village should look like. Its Red Lion Inn offers dark orange butternut squash soup this time of year to dining rooms full of appreciative day trippers. If you drive in any direction through the lesser known villages of Berkshire County, MA or Columbia County, NY or North to Bennington, VT, one can see why generations of hearty souls have clung to this land. It's spectacular in Fall.

Global Warming

The lesser temperatures of our Winters (the effect of Global Warming) are beginning to harm the Sugar Maples of New England. Without the extremes of temperature, the sap of the maples will not flow and an entire industry is in jeopardy as well as the lives of the trees themselves. Could there be a proper Fall if the Maples began to die out? Would the collective heart of New England be broken? The rusts of the Oaks and the golds of the Ashes and Birches are nothing without the reds and oranges of the Maples. I worry for my old sugar maples who provide shelter and have lined the dirt road for the past hundred and fifty years.

If you could save the colors of New England by turning off a few lights in your home...or coordinating errands to use less fossil fuel...wouldn't you do it?