. . . love the one you’re with.
– Stephen Stills
Are we being exhorted to cheat on an absent partner or to appreciate what’s in front of us? Opinions vary, just as people do. And leaves, for that matter.
For the last 18 years in Ottawa, I waited for the fall colours with great anticipation — browns and earth tones, yellows and golds, oranges and bronzes, reds and purples — but especially the last two. As my circumstances permitted, I observed them in passing while driving around town, planned photo shoots at city parks, made day trips to local viewpoints, and inveigled someone to drive me along backroads in maple country. Even in below-average years with faded colours on stressed-by-drought trees, it was glorious. It wasn’t just a tree here and there: whole valleys, whole hillsides were lit up.
For the last six weeks in Calgary, I have watched the leaves turn, well, mostly yellow. Here and there I’ve seen a front-yard tree where yellow shades into gold . . .
Ash tree – maybe a Patmore
. . . or orange shades into red . . .
Mountain Ash
Ohio Buckeye
. . . but they’re isolated cases: brought-from-away specimen trees. In terms of what comes naturally, as it were — from the native trees growing where they can eke out enough water in a small depression on an otherwise-grassy hill, to the trees filling-in the river valley and blanketing the far bank — the overwhelming colour in the landscape is yellow.
Yellow as far as the eye can see . . .
Do I miss the oranges-and-bronzes, the reds-and-purples? Sure I do. But I don’t feel that I’m cheating on them by appreciating what’s in front of me.
