Colors of Fall

While I immensely prefer spring there are things about fall I look forward to each year. As the leaves begin to shift from green to pale yellow the anticipation begins. I’m lucky enough to live near mountains that transform to glorious gold, orange, and red every year. I have kind friends that tell me where they’ve seen the most exquisite colors when they beat me to the annual canyon drives. But the color that really builds excitement for me is a dry, dead brown that most people simply find dismal.

The dusty brown of leaves that have given up, let go, and fluttered to the ground. Not the prettiest color of fall, I must admit, but the excitement I feel is not for the beautiful color of fall leaves. Oh, no. It is the color that comes with a delicious, crackly, munchy, crunchy, swishy sound. The color that shouts that leaves are perfectly dry and ready for walking, jumping, and marching through.

I absolutely love to crunch my way through dead dry leaves! I was a bit worried about my chance for this wonderful activity this year. The trees in the apartment complex I live in are still at the gold and red stage, with only a few limp yellow specimens dotting the lawn and the weather forecast threatening rain and snow mixes for the rest of the week. Living in the desert as I do, I value the fall rains that begin to fill reservoirs for the year’s drinking and gardening water. But they absolutely ruin the crisp crackle of marching through fall leaves.

Fortunately, I spent yesterday watching my cousin’s kids. My cousin with two very large trees in his yard, one in front and one in back, already providing drifts of brown crispy cracklyness. With the added benefit of a two year old and a four year old that find it not only completely rational to spend half an hour at a time crunching around the yard, but find it as irresistible as I do. In fact, they spent some time making serious plans on how to approach the piles of leaves they already know their dad will be creating to cause the highest dispersal rate when they race across the yard and jump into the temporarily tidy stacks.

I may join them.

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