Just this past week, that thing happened that I forget about every year, when the sky is less blue and instead becomes a deep, deep almost-black gray. It makes the trees glow. This is also when people start burning wood in their wood stoves, and so the color combination smells like woodsmoke. This makes me crave dark coffee and ginger cookies. Also cigarettes, which I haven’t touched in ages. I satisfy that craving by breathing in and out. In and out.
We talk about “peak” here in New England as if it’s one particular moment that you can catch. You can try. There are guidelines: try to shoot for Columbus Day if you can. Pray it doesn’t rain. Pay attention to the temperature in September. If you make it up here, sneak into the woods and try to blend in. Find the places people don’t go. (Avoid Monument Mountain! It’s like Grand Central Station over there on a Sunday morning.) Bring a thermos. Park on the side of the road. Trespass.
But really, peak, this one mysterious day of color, is just one part of a process that keeps shifting and changing every day of the year. And we don’t actually know what day it will be. It’s impossible to know until the day after, when it rains or the wind picks up and like that, the leaves are gone. Then you know. It was yesterday.
As of this moment, we’re not there yet. The wind blew in yesterday, and it got so cold I finally turned on the heat. I’m afraid I’ve put off putting the garden to sleep too long, and I’ll have to bundle up and put my hands in the freezing ground. There are still cabbages out there. Weedy herbs. Jerusalem artichokes no one will eat.
But the leaves are still here, at least today.
Happy Monday, friends.
Occasionally I teach workshops, and I have one coming up this fall. Join me and stellar novelist 
Happy Monday to you, you beautiful writer, you.
If you sit very still with your chin tilted up to the sky, perhaps peak will land softly on your shoulder, just for a moment.
Worth a try.
xo
And that’s where you’ll find me. xo
Alana, all the more reason why we have to live every moment, striving to notice the world around us–all the various colors of the sky, the leaves throughout the seasons when they adorn our trees, the grass,EVERYTHING–every day that we’re alive. That way, every day is “peak”. And, of course, it’s so wonderful if we can be aware of our loved ones, and all living creatures, with the same caring intensity, loving our world with energy. Makes all the difference. Thank you for your lovely reminder.
Beautiful. I just got back from Santa Fe, and thought of you and your sweet cook book while I was sipping lattes at Counter Culture!
Looking forward to the next one!
🙂 Terri
Oh, Counter Culture! And I was thinking as I wrote this piece that one of the only things I might love more than fall in New England is fall in New Mexico. I miss that dry cold, and the piñon, too. One of these years I’ve got to get back out to visit the Aspens…
Aspen Vista was perfect this year, all the way out to Abiquiu and up to Taos…I spent the last 2 months out there working. Now I’m back in STL and trying to adjust. 🙁
I pulled out your cook book this week to re-acclimate to cooking instead of all the on the fly road food. Good stuff, big love in there.
Looking forward to your next venture!
Enjoy your autumn!
🙂 T
Lovely images and thoughts Alana. We’ve just had the opposite magic where I look out of my window at work over a valley of grey with just the faintest hint of pale green for weeks and weeks then suddenly one day the valley has exploded in a carpet of 100 shades of green with touches of white blossoms…
It amazes me every time 🙂
Somehow it makes it all even better to think of the opposite happening on the other side of the world. Thanks for this, Beck 🙂