Sugar Maples

The Sugar Maples offer the most spectacular colors in Fall. I am partial to the nearly iridescent reds to orange that shimmer in the hills., www.mapleorchardfarms.com.

Last Fall, near Lee, MA. I drove up into the Berkshire hills through Beartown State Forest.

I parked at the side of the road at a little rest stop next to a 35 acre lake named Benedict Pond. The Sugar Maples and other trees that lined the water bank and hill on the other side of the lake were reflected in the water with such incredible clarity and intensity – reality was jeopardized. The water glimmered me into submission. It was that beautiful. I was forced to choose the reflection over the trees themselves. Exiting that place left me grateful and denied simultaneously – knowing the image would no longer be in front of my

eyes and it's memory forever a thought without the picture. But mine, nonetheless.


Color/Collection/Connections

Around my home, as Fall waves its artifacts around me, I go about collecting the most spectacular leaves – as if any one could be prettier than the next. I am rather fussy about who is chosen and who is left behind. Each leaf tenders a sophisticated abstraction beyond the skills of the best expressionists.

I place each masterpiece in a very old wooden bowl that sits in the pride of place on my long country tiger maple table. The bowl has seen years and years of service. My great aunt Marcia used this bowl on her farm table to chop and mince the ingredients of her life. She used the long curved broad blade that still sits in the bowl. The bowl was used so long and so well that it has places in its base where it's worn thin and through. The leaves I place over this scar are sadly, within a day, faded and twisted upon themselves.

My cats find the dry, crumbling leaves most acceptable and steal them during the long, quiet night of Columbia County, NY. Teddy and Naboo chase the leaves about the kitchen floor and attempt, like Wilbur and Orville, to persuade them to fly once more before they shatter. Every morning I find my Sugar Maples' end of season dreams in broken fragments on my kitchen floor.

My inability to capture the colors of Fall in its true objects is always a disappointment. Two years ago I pressed leaves in wax paper just as my mother taught me long ago. The trick is to iron the top and bottom sheets of waxed paper through plain paper with a hot steam iron without burning the paper or the leaves. The process allows the wax to transfer from its paper sleeve and melt around each leaf, coating its surface and sending warm, sweet aromas throughout the kitchen. When the remains of the waxed paper backing is peeled away, the leaf remains intact – encased like a funereal body without soul but allowing preservation of near life-like form for a few additional days.

Fall is the earth's system to prepare for the long sleep with the promise of rebirth merely months away. Is there any wonder the same concepts have been exploited for thousands of years to eliminate human fears regarding our ultimate and eventual big sleep?

For a lifetime I have been briefly in possession of the colors of Fall; the snippets of technicolor time give further meaning to the lush complexity of existence.