Roaming Roads and Rippling Rivers

After a hectic week, when I’d passed my citizenship test, gained a Tree Steward course certificate, come second place with my Trivia Team, become a U.S. citizen, and then spent a couple of nights losing sleep and a vet visit with poor Malcolm having urinary issues, I was ready to spend time in the garden, catching up with overdue jobs. But I was actually quite relieved to wake up to rain falling, rendering any garden work unlikely, and so decided to take an overdue ‘me’ trip into the countryside and capture the fall foliage, which was peaking this weekend.

While the city folk leaf peepers drove the smooth tarmac roads along the Skline Drive to enjoy the foliage colors, I headed for the graveled and dusty back roads where I met less than a handful of the more adventurous explorers who had chosen to leave the paved roads. The morning’s rain had enhanced the leaf colors. I was surrounded with dark chocolate, rust, golden ochre, lemon yellow, aged raspberry wine, mellowed merlot red, corn husk yellow, and forest greens of firs, pines and cedars.

I stopped by a river, my car the only one in the lay by, and crossed the road to a track I’d spotted between the trees. The trail was muddy from the rain, but the air was crisp, fragrant with the damp earth and Mother Nature beginning the decomposition of fallen leaves.

Purple asters lined the trail, with green mosses on fallen trunks and between tree roots. The river was low after the summer’s drought, more rocks than usual jutting out of the water, and the flow of the river slower than I’d seen it before. The river had always cascaded noisily along its route, white caps surfing over the boulders, but today, it meandered around the obstacles, no froth or rivulets swirling along its path. I climbed down to the water’s edge to take photos, mindful of the slippery smooth surfaces of the rocks, still wet from the earlier rain, and if I’d felt more daring, I could have rock hopped from one bank to the other.

Back in the car, I continued along the valley and stopped at a few points, admiring the long shadows from the sun, that had now made an effort to break through the dark clouds and shine down, lighting up the trees and making their colors even more vibrant. The sun’s rays lit up the oranges, yellows and reds, the trees glowing as though aflame.

I left the valley road, and drove upwards into the mountains, the pavement giving way to dusty gravel where Stanley rumbled over washboard ruts that stretched across the road. Friendly locals waved from their homes, some from cars that they bent over and worked on, some sitting on front porches with a beer and chewing tobacco, slowly raising an arm as I trundled by. There was a quiet golden solitude up here, with chilly cool air, the cloudy haze that had hung low in pockets of the valley slowly evaporating in the sunshine. Squirrels leaped and jumped across the road in front of me, busy collecting black walnuts and acorns for their winter store, cheeks stuffed with their treasure.

I spent a couple of hours up on the mountains, meandering along narrow lanes, and passing no other vehicles, apart from a teenager on his ATV, also out for a ride, and enjoying this picturesque afternoon, just like me. I eventually began my descent into the valley, down a rutted switchback road, a steep drop on one side, with the mountain rising up high on the other. I came across a small community, where upon turning a corner, was startled by Jason from Friday the 13th, brandishing a knife, and initially appearing as though he was lurching towards my car. There were also witches hanging from trees, these folks obviously enjoyed Halloween. The next little town had some mystical people with gourd heads, which I admired, but also found a little unsettling.

And then I was back down to a river again, and low and behold, there was a winery on the other side. I stopped for a glass of wine, and chatted to a local environmental group, whose events I’d been to in the past. It had been a lovely relaxing day, and as I made my way home, I was thankful for the rain that morning, I hadn’t realized how much I needed some downtime. Garden jobs could resume after work on Monday.