Late October is the hiatus between the spectacle of flaming foliage and the silver naked beauty of winter's trees.
All maple leaves have fallen leaving silver-gray crowns shimmering brightly among dark elm gold and tan and brown beech chocolate.
Cool temperatures, a few rainy days, one gusty wind and a profuse leaf shower covers the forest floor with this season's duff for next year's humus. Only the rugged dark brown oak leaves will be left fluttering in the cold winds well into the winter of December and January. Some of them never let go; they are pushed off their stems by the next generation's leaf buds at the end of winter into spring.
The forest floor is
carpeted with the golden tan lace of hay-scented fern abundantly napped back by the
curlicue yellows and browns of newly fallen leaves.
Fields are brown with goldenrod tan headed tassels and light gray aster buttons. Queen Ann's lacy blossoms have dried up into compact little nest-like cups. They protrude into the air in scattered, irregular rows along the edges of fields and meadows and by-ways.
We become aware of the quiet, soft, twirps and chirps of black hooded chickadees as they flit nervously about, in search of food, first from twigs buds then tree bark crannies, where they store seeds, and search for tiny insects and eggs.
The sound becomes intensified by another half octave as the nuthatches scurry up and down, then down-side out, then in various all other directions.
A red squirrel bounces up and down and all around one tree after another. In the quiet of this moment its two ounces of leaping life sounds more like several pounds of unbounded energy.
Leaf beds grow increasingly thicker around us. The day steadily passes on to its high noon. Autumn gradually gives way to Winter. Time stays and change takes place unnoticed from one moment to another.
A soft and silent stillness lay over the rain-ladened leaves bringing peaceful nostalgia to the humble heart.
Copyright © 1988, 1999 Barbara A. Smith and John G. Hipps. All rights reserved.
This essay was first published October 26, 1988 in the Free-Press Courier, Westfield, Pennsylvania.