I’ve long wanted to visit Zion National Park in Utah. When I visited my friend last week, I didn’t realize how close she lived to Zion, and I was super excited when she said we’d go there one day during our stay. The sky was overcast when we arrived, and the colors of the land were all muted and dull. Still we gasped in awe at the majesty of the cliffs that rose high into the sky. Then the sun came out, and I thought I would die from the beauty.
I’m on my annual weekend with my girlfriends, one of whom moved to Utah from the southeastern United States last May. The air, plants, and landscape are so different here from our humid, soft forests and mountains in Virginia. I love the wide open skies, arid plants, colorful rocks, and jagged peaks. These photos are from a little park a few miles away in St. George. Tomorrow we’re hoping to go to Zion, which I’m super excited about.
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.
We’re having a beautiful autumn this year. The trees are changing slowly, and brilliantly, and are hanging on to their leaves. Maybe we had more rain this summer than usual. Whatever the reason, I’m drinking it in. My husband and I hiked to a bald mountaintop yesterday, a place on the Appalachian Trail called the Rice Fields.
From the moment we stepped out of the car onto the gravel road at the trailhead, we knew we were in for a treat.
I gasped a lot on this hike. Every few steps, I stopped to photograph leaves. The forest was like being in an outdoor gem garden filled with rubies and citrines, topaz and emeralds.
At some point I realized I wasn’t going to be able to photograph every beautiful leaf, but it took me a while.
My husband and I woke without an alarm yesterday morning, ate a quick breakfast, and got in the car to drive the two hours to Grayson Highlands where we would hike Mt. Rogers. As I packed my daypack, he told me it would be in the 40s and really windy. I grabbed a couple of extra long sleeved shirts to choose from, along with ear warmers and gloves. But mostly I was excited to bring my camera; I remembered this hike being stunning.
We arrived at 10am to blue skies and fierce wind — wind so strong that flags stood straight out and snapped and cracked in it, that trees whipped sideways, and that it ripped the door out of my hand when I opened it to get out of the car. I could hardly close the door against the wind. I had underestimated the weather and did not bring my wind breaker even though my husband told me it would be cold and windy. I feared I would be miserable the whole time.
I put on every layer I brought, and we got moving to keep warm. As soon as we started hiking, I was warm enough despite the cutting wind. It helped that the day was glorious. On our way to the state park, we drove through rolling hills planted with Christmas tree farms, and wound our way through mountain s-curves as gold leaves fluttered to the ground.
We hiked through a tunnel of Rhododendron and I could see my breath. I brushed up against a fir and smelled Christmas trees. The trail was lively with backpackers coming off the mountain after camping the night, bundled warm against the biting chill.
The vistas were spectacular, just like they were last time we hiked this trail ten years ago. Last time we hiked was in June, when fresh spring greens and pinks were emerging. This time, we saw yellows and oranges and brilliant reds mixed in with the evergreen of the firs. The brilliant reds were so intense, they were almost florescent in their redness. It turns out they were not leaves, but clusters of shining berries.
We passed over exposed meadows broken up by giant boulders, then down into glens filled with firs and rhododendrons and ferns and moss. We passed through a rocky notch that opened into a golden glade where the the forest floor was covered in fallen yellow leaves and the October light slanted through the trees.
The light all day was glorious. At one point I thought I had my amber-lensed sunglasses on, but I did not. I hadn’t even brought them. I just wore my regular glasses. Everything had a golden glow.
When we were out on exposed balds, the wind was so sharp and cold it made my eyes water. We hiked fast, though, and that kept me warm. We passed backpacking campsites that smelled of damp forest morning, nylon tents, and campfire. Smoke twirled up from the ground. We heard the zip of tents opening and the murmur of morning voices.
When we got into the fir forest near the top of Mt. Rogers, the crowd was absent. We’d been following the white blazes of the Appalachian Trail all day, but the trail to the top of the mountain was a spur trail, and we only saw a couple of other people on it. Unlike most summit hikes around here, the culmination of this trail wasn’t a view; it was a boulder, the highest point in Virginia, in an evergreen forest that felt primeval. The forest looked ancient with its moss covered stumps, moss covered tree falls, mossy trail and stones and tree trunks. The ground was wet and everything dripped; the mountaintop was often in the clouds, and not much light seeped through the dense fir needles to dry it out after being drenched in mist.
When we emerged from the forest, the light was warm and bathed the mountains in its amber glow, but I struggled all day to capture it. For once I hardly cared because the hike itself made me fall ecstatically in love with the world at least three times because I was so overwhelmed by the beauty. This is hands down my favorite trail I’ve ever hiked. I want to hike it again and again. I didn’t need photos to capture the light, I just enjoyed it.
But then, near the end, when I figured I just wasn’t going to get any shots I was excited about, I saw a pile of brown leaves on a stone in the dappled forest light. One textured leaf was spotlighted by the October sun. And I got it.
Eleven days ago, I shared a photograph of a chrysalis I found dangling in the compost. I’ve been checking it every day. Yesterday, the green sheath turned clear, and I could see the butterfly’s black and orange wings inside.
Today, I ate lunch perched on top of our deck table like I usually do when the weather is nice. The crickets were back at it with the chirping after their silence this morning in the fog. The oak has a few fully red leaves now. I only remember it going straight to brown in the past; I don’t remember it stopping through red on the way. Either the summer rains made a big difference this year, or it goes quick and I miss the red every year, or I’ve just not paid close enough attention. But this year there are glossy ruby-red leaves, and they’re beautiful.
The sun was hot on my shoulder; it was too warm for the jeans and tee-shirt I wore. The more I sat while I ate, the more things I saw that I wanted to do on my lunch break: fill the bird feeders, water the salvias and blanketflowers I transplanted, check on the chrysalis. When I’d set my plate down after eating, the wind lifted. It added a beautiful shushing to the air as it rippled through the oak leaves on the tree. I decided grab my camera and check on the chrysalis.
When I hiked up to the top of the hill, I saw the freshly emerged butterfly drying its wings a few inches from its empty chrysalis. An hour in either direction, and I might have missed it.
Butterfly Mind 