The Garden of the Seasons: Putting the "Oh!" back into October

The color over the Columbus Day Weekend -- whoops! I mean "Indigenous Peoples' Day" or some such more enlightened nomenclature -- was the best we've seen in several years. New England fall foliage, a brand name pleasure, a sure source of tourist attention (and dollars), a claim to regional fame, and an almost copyright hold on the month of October, began slipping after a few years of what commentators referred to as "muted" color. 
          TV weather reports used to show maps of the region with percentages penciled in for what percentage of "peak" could be expected in the coming weekend for various parts of the region. Connecticut: 30 percent this weekend. Massachusetts: 60 percent. And up in Vermont this week -- look at that -- 95 percent at peak!

           Local wisdom this year, we were told, anticipated a stronger year for brightly colored foliage because the region -- at least in Berkshire County -- received a lot of rain this summer. (Not so much, I can attest, in the Boston and South Shore coastal region.) And on the clear days the color was certainly stronger.
          My theory is the havoc that rapid climate change is causing to the notion of well defined, predictable "seasons" is eroding the whole notion of "peak" color. Our daughter Sonya, a great fan of our Berkshire Octobers, estimated that about 50 percent of the region's deciduous trees had "turned" last weekend. About quarter of the trees were still to come. And another quarter had already lost their leaves. And in fact all of the woodland trails we walked were well littered with fallen leaves. But still -- lots more up in the trees!
           On Saturday of the three-day weekend we visited the Basin Dam trail in Lee, Mass., a Trustees of Reservations property adjoining October Mountain State Forest, where we encountered a party of avid mushroom gatherers happily engaged in a harvest. We followed this up with visit to a new gem created by the Berkshire Natural Resources Council where a short walk, partly over a newly created wood-plank walk leads to a marvelous view of a wetlands called Parson's Marsh, glimpsed in the photo below. Cattails in the foreground, a broad pond with lilies, ducks, and signs of beaver-work in the middle distance, a framing hillside beyond.  

         On the way back to the parking area, I took some photos (one of them above) of the foliage along the path in the foreground, backed by the hillside that walls in a favorite Stockbridge-Lenox back road aptly and poetically named Under Mountain Road. Happy are those who live beneath such picturesque contours. 
           That evening (at least I think it was the same day) Sonya and I went down to the lake called Stockbridge Bowl to take in the twilight falling over the hills on the opposite side and on the lake water itself. The few lights faintly appearing in the hillside, and reflected directly below on the lake's placid surface belong to Kripalu, the famed (and pricey) healthy living spa.
            That was Day One. More to come.