Fall leaves have peaked at the higher elevations here. Last weekend the mountains were soft pumpkin mounds with flecks of green. This weekend when my husband and I drove to a trailhead, the hillsides were rusty brown with flecks of burnt orange.

When we parked and started our hike to Angel’s Rest, though, the forest was a brilliant saffron.

As we moved up the mountainside, we passed through glades filled with lobed oak leaves the color of copper, or oval, veined leaves the color of parchment. There was one glade where the light and leaf litter blushed the soft color of pink lady apples. Some leaves were glossy, some were matte, some were papery, some were leathery. Many were speckled like bird eggs. We even saw witch hazel flowers, which I didn’t realize stuck around through the entire summer; the flowers appear in spring, then I guess are hidden by leaves all summer, and then when the leaves drop in fall, the flowers are still there.

The volume of leaves on the ground was stunning. Millions of them. At times the drifts of leaves were shin deep. All of these leaves making food for the trees and air for us to breathe. They are miraculous to me.

At the top of the climb is where the bulk of the brown leaves were. We sat on a rock and watched leaves drift the long fall into the valley.

On the way back down, we shuffled our feet through the piles of leaves to maintain contact with the earth and keep from slipping. The forest was filled with rustling sounds, not just from us, but from squirrels and chipmunks foraging in the leaf litter, and from wind blowing through the treetops.

Near the bottom, we passed through a glade that still had some green in it, and then at the very end, I saw two beautiful soft pink treelets that were the perfect end to what will likely be one of our last hikes of the season with colorful leaves.