Swamps And Trees

There is a coolness in the air that suggests Fall is coming. Sure, the autumnal equinox is still a few weeks away, and maybe I'm wishing too much for the hot weather to find it's way back to the southern hemisphere, but the most reliable sign is that some of the leaves on my fig tree are turning rusty and brown around the edges. The fig plants seem like some of the earliest to have it's leaves dry up and fall off the trees. The red bud maple that grows about twenty feet south of the fig tree also appears to drop it's leaves fairly early in the fall season. They turn bright yellow first, with some oranges leaves mixed in.

For a long time I thought i might be missing out on the brightest of the fall leaves by the description of the foliage of the trees up in the northeast. While I was driving that semi I was sent to the northeastern states frequently. Many times to Maine to pick up a load of newsprint from the pulp and paper mills up there. In the process of doing that I passed through all the states of the northeast continuously. I finally got to witness the fall leaves in that area, and for truth, it's a pretty spectacular sight. The reds are really, really red.

The changing colors up on the Blue Ridge Parkway may be just as spectacular. The altitude up on the Parkway makes it about the same climate as the northeast even though it's located further south. Some of the higher peaks have the same weather and vegetation as the Great Lakes area up in Canada.

The fall leaves around the coastal plains here are colorful enough, but it's so flat a body can't see the grand scheme of things to wonder if it compares with other places like the mountains or the northeast. In my younger years, growing up around here, it was only when we would travel up toward the state capitol in Raleigh that we'd get into rolling hills where a broad spectrum of the fall colors could be seen.

It doesn't take the height of mountains to impress me. The rolling hills of the Piedmont take on a certain mystery compared to the coastal plains where I grew up. Real mountains just blow me away. I truly don't know how to act there. I don't know how to be ready for the changes that can happen simply because of altitude. My natal family went to the Smoky Mountains for a week each year because my father was a high school agriculture teacher and an advisor to the Future Farmers of America. The State chapters maintained a summer camp west of Asheville, and another one at White Lake not far from here for the mountaineers to visit the lowlands.

The trip to my daughter's wedding near Seattle, Washington was unique. The 14,000 foot high plus heights of Mount Rainier can be seen from sea level at Puget Sound. That's a pretty impressive sight. The only other solitary mountain anywhere near that height I've ever seen from sea level in Mount Fuji in Japan. I finally intuited the reason Mount Fuji is considered so holy by the Japanese. It's for the same reason the Greek temples were once considered so holy. The distinct shape of Mount Fuji can be distinguished by region and used as a memory system. Mount Fuji has the equivalent of "stations of the cross" on every distinct part of it.

There's nothing even close to that around here in the swamps of the coastal plains. Probably not in the plains around places like Kansas either. At least in Kansas you can see a long way. But here, the thick forests make a person look up unless they're on the edge of a cleared field or pasture, and the distant reaches are still limited by the borders of the cleared land. We're forced to look up to experience any visual freedom at all. Do you reckon that has anything to do with the religious fanaticism that runs rampart in these parts?