The Turning of the Year

Day 344: It is the turning of the year. Seemingly overnight, the vine maples have gone from quietly suggesting colour to wearing it with flamboyance, hushing the voices of our thousand shades of green with their bold fashion statement. To my way of thinking, autumn in the Pacific Northwest eclipses that of the East where colour is everywhere. Our reds and golds are polka-dots on a fabric of evergreen, shock value in their propensity for showing off. "You think you're something, Doug-fir? Here. Hold my beer!" While the remainder of the deciduous crowd sits on the sidelines in shades of dingy gold and brown, vine maples do their stuff to the awe of the audience. Their only competition for Best of Show is the bright yellow of the tamaracks, but they're in another bar, over the mountains and down the other side. This, I predict, will be an Orange Year. Orange Years are the standard, and delight western Washington leaf-peepers. Red Years are to be treasured, few and far between, coming only when some mysterious combination of temperature and humidity allows. Brown Years, the sad and sorry years, are fairly rare, when the vine maples close up shop early, as if to say, "That's it. Done with this. I'm outta here. 'Bye!"