The leaves are mostly down now, after a long night of heavy rain. The past few weeks of fall foliage here in Vermont have been glorious.

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Still to come are the Red Oaks and the Tamarack with many others, notably Virginia Creeper and Staghorn Sumac, and, where they grow, Ginkgo and Witch Hazel all playing minor roles in the symphony.

Several million people come to Vermont each year to see this remarkable changing, including some who come too early and others arriving too late, at least to see the peak. Peak or not, I’m grateful Liz and I took time last week to venture out.

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Of course it is easy to fall in love with the intensely passionate peak colors and, yet, the quiet tones that arrived this morning and will carry on—post-peak—through most of November are also worth travelling to see. A changing view rather than a view gone by.

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When I stop to think about all of this happening in the space of a few weeks and add to that the migration of millions of birds, the death or changing of trillions of insects, it is mind boggling, to say the least, what changes come to life this time of year, all because the position of the sun in the sky leaves us with fewer and fewer hours of life-sustaining energy each day until early Spring.

Yes, there are changes happening now related solely to human activity rather than the sun alone. Some I find impossible to see and understand while others are clearer and easy to measure. All are worrying, knowing how we have tipped a balance that these hills have known for eons.

Much of what I see every Fall here in Vermont is beyond imagining—colors, at every turn, colors I have no words for!

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It is a time to slow down and enjoy the changes, inevitable as they are, and see with new eyes the amazing world we live in as it goes through these immense changes. Like the milkweed seeds floating away to find a seedbed, we can expect to find more changes in the Spring.

18 Oct This entry was published on October 18, 2021 at 9:20 am and is filed under Fall colors, John Snell, John Snell Photographer, Leaves, Photograph, Trees, Uncategorized, Vermont, www.johnsnell.photography. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.