This is the only time of year when looking up fills me with joy, and that’s saying a lot for a rock like me, who is over a million years old. For most of my life, even when there was no other life on Earth, the only colors I saw were the intricate patterns and palettes the sun painted on the clouds at sunrise and sunset. Now, at this time of year, I look up and see a tinge of blue through the dense yellow foliage. In a few days, I’ll only see a tinge of yellow scattered across the deep blue sky as most of the leaves would have withered and fallen on me and my neighbors. Soon, I’ll look up to see just gray and white, which will be extinguished as thick blankets of snow cover the landscape, blinding me for a few months.

Before I temporarily lose my vision, I enjoy the sights of the fall colors sweeping the landscape in a blaze of yellow.  Some of these amber leaves have already started falling and I do my best to cradle them before we all take a long winter nap.  These leaves, who live only for the briefest of time, a few months at most, have captivated me with their industrious character,  and entertained me through their colorful transitions.   Every spring, they sprout with the brightest of greens, as if to take permission and ease into existence, then transform into the deepest of greens and culminate into the brightest of yellows!  

The trees themselves have short lifespans with each lasting only a few hundred years.  I have been on this landscape long before a single tree came into existence.  I have seen several varieties of them sprout, live, thrive, but eventually dull themselves into a sleep they never wake up from.  These trees are the latest variety, waking up every spring, laboring through the summer to gather reserves and shutting down every winter to numb the pain of the bitter winter.  It is a struggle, but a struggle that seems to be working, for they have managed to survive for a few thousand years.  Time will tell if such a strategy will work out in the long run.  I hope they do as this old soul relishes and have gotten used to their flashes of color, but I do know that the Great Time claims everything eventually.  For now, all I can do is enjoy their spectacle before the winter winds drape layers of white snow on their show.