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| (Photo from Pinterest via Write on Edge prompt, click for source) |
I went to college in New England. Specifically: Western Massachusetts. Amherst. A quintessential New Englandy, uber-collegey college town.
New England exists for Autumn.
The Summers are hotter and more stiflingly humid than you would think, the Springs often mud bogged and shockingly brief. Winters too cold and long, of course; weeks of gray February skies that bind the soul in melancholy.
And then there is Autumn, New England’s glory and redemption.
Maple covered hills wait all year for it. Sun warmed days and crisping breath-visible nights, the air crackling clear enough to cause humbling by the plenitude of stars upon stepping out into the night, on your way home from that final beer at the campus tavern.
There is always one day. One day that astonishes, when the chlorophyll has given up the ghost and called a mass retreat.
One morning, my first college fall, I woke up and looked out the window and thought “No, I am still asleep and dreaming that I have awakened, because this is not planet Earth, as trees just do not come in that color.”
They were hot pink. Fuchsia.
All of them.
As far as I could see.
All as deep and bold and saturated a pink as the wedding dress I had bought to marry Dan in, that my friends told me I simply couldn’t wear and made me exchange for the cornflower blue. (But this is yet years into my future; unimaginable to my college self.)
I went right up to the window, cocked my head left, looked to the mountains, beyond the bowl of fuchsia surrounding. I could see reds, oranges, golden yellows and ashen browns; spots of green, deep and piney, too. Autumn.
Illusion broken. Earthbound, I remained.
But breathless, nonetheless; in awe of nature’s unnatural day-glow splendor, and magnificent, yet ephemeral, beauty.
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I'm also linking with "Just Write" because this really flowed. And they're both on Tuesdays, and I can't pick just one... And so I'm a two-timer.
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