A sky that dawned only faintly tinted with rose has moved rapidly from bright golden light to a near-full blanket of clouds. The promised storm has arrived early, its outriders here well in advance of the main force due later tomorrow. And while we have only a light drizzle here, we can see the snow falling on the peaks in real time.
Running such errands as voting today, we noticed that even in town, at its lower elevation, the landscape is mostly aflame now. There is still green — plenty of it, in fact — but more than half of the foliage is now one of the colors of fire: gold, amber, crimson, copper, bronze. Here at home, the aspens have really just begun to turn their cloaks; of the four outside the living room window, one dropped its leaves in August, a casualty of our drought, but the other three had only gone gold at the top until today. They are electric even in the clouds’ shadow; in the sunlight, positively neon. The older maple went full red over the weekend, and it will darken to scarlet in the next few days before the leaves begin to dry and curl and drop altogether.
One of our most beautiful sources of fall color, though, is found in the vines that snake over the sections of latilla fencing on the north side, between the house and, at some distance, the road. Such vines are found all over the Pueblo, scaling fences and cascading down barbed wire. Here, they hold the wood in their embrace across three sections, as though keeping it warm and safe in the run-up to winter. Elsewhere they are best known as Virginia creeper, she of the five fingers and the frosted purple berries at the end of scarlet stems, but they as indigenous to this land as they are to Turtle Island’s eastern reaches. The vines, deep forest green in summer, went turned crimson, then scarlet over the last couple of weeks, turning the wooden partitions into panels of pure flame.
Today, the same weather that has sent the aspens irrevocably past the golden threshold has likewise begun to hasten the ivy on its path to winter dormancy. They are still red, still shot through with fire, but the browns have begun to encroach, bits of copper and aged bronze contrasting with the golden color of the wood beneath. It’s fitting somehow, for we are solidly into firewood season, to see fire wood of a more ephemeral sort.
As the leaves turn, so, too, do the temperatures, and the woodstoves are back in operation now. Beneath the stairs of the outer deck, firewood is stacked several rows high and three or four rows deep, largely aspen and oak. Two other sections of fencing shelter additional rows — mostly piñon and oak in one, bright red cedar in the other. All will be put to use between now and June, in combination and rotation: Aspen burns cleanly, good for keeping the flues clear; cedar, for heat and a powerful flame, provided that it is kept safely behind the tempered glass doors; oak, the longest-burning, for full nights of solid heat; and, of course, piñon, pitchy and capable of clogging flues over a season, but burned in moderation, producing great warmth and that wonderful spicy scent signature to this land and season.
The outside world associates red with Christmas, but here, blues and whites are the colors of winter. The reds belong to fall: the color of fire, upon the land and in actual flame. And now, the wind is rising; the fire in the large woodstove is burning low. It’s time to feed the flames before the snow turns its head in our direction.
~ Aji
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