OWL-DRAGON

Fall Colors

This morning as I started running it was still quite dark – the first mile or so I ran into branches and tripped over stones and branches hidden by leaf litter. But I have the trail etched in memory and so navigated the twists and turns pretty easily. Then the dawn light began – at first it was a steel gray light but briefly the clouds parted and as I ran on the edge of the woods, a treeless marsh to my right, the sky became this wonderful red purple. All around me there is the yellow and orange of fall. It is far too beautiful for a short run so I stretch out the route to take me on a wider arc.

Why I wonder does fall foliage so resonate with us? After all it is the harbinger of winter. And fall is a melancholic time compared with spring. Yet the most recent Runners World has a poll indicating that for a majority of runners (52%) fall is their favorite running season. I was a city kid so it’s not like I have childhood associations with fall and I doubt if my Irish ancestors in the west of Ireland had this kind of fall so it is not a genetic memory.

I just know that I found this morning achingly beautiful. Even though it is hunting season, twice I got quite close to small groups of deer. I stopped more than once to take in the views. Tomorrow they are predicting heavy rain and wind so it is quite possibly that next week trees will be quite bare.

For the Japanese the cherry blossom symbolizes the brevity of life but for me it is this profusion of autumnal color that says cherish the moment.