Enjoying the land of many colors | News, Sports, Vacancies

There’s one thing I really don’t like about fall…it’s the announcement that winter is coming. However, the one thing I am looking forward to is the colors of the fall foliage.

Directly opposite my office window is “burning bush” bush. It’s bright red as I write this. I don’t mean a little red or a faded red… but a really fiery red! It looks like someone with a spray gun came and painted it red.

Most fall colors are a little more subdued… but some maples can also remind you of a burning bush… a bright and clean red.

On another recent fall day, it was gray and raining for most of the day… but then the rain stopped and the sun came out.

It was already evening, and the sun’s rays fell at a high angle, obliquely, almost parallel to the landscape. When the sun is like this, it can brightly illuminate the autumn leaves. My wife looked across the lake at the shine of it all, at the trees in the distance, illuminated against the black sky of a receding rain cloud, and said: “I need to take a picture of this.”

She is good with a cell phone and went out onto the porch and took a photo. Soon it went out “popular,” as they say, to our family through family chat, the Internet, “cloud,” or whatever you want to call it… and a few seconds later the phone buzzed again “Isn’t it beautiful?” “I wish I was there” etc. etc., accompanied by what the new generation calls “emoticons” things like smiling faces or “Thumbs up” to express gratitude.

On a day like this, you forget about the days when a snowstorm could hit that frozen lake, when you couldn’t even see the other side.

This may not be a good description, but the autumn colors remind me a lot of impressionist paintings. Artists in this genre were exceptionally talented at depicting the effects of light on the landscape. I think that the photograph of my wife that day, if it had been painted by such an artist, would probably end up in some art gallery.

Okay, maybe all this is making my eyes a little watery. I might even be out of my league. Often the things I write about have to do with the human landscape and the contradictions that surround us… rather than the views from our front window.

But every now and then I think you can just sit back, relax and take what Mother Nature gives you in a positive way.

There’s a country song that says if cowboys can’t get to heaven then “Take me to Texas, because Texas is as close as I am.” I wouldn’t agree with this.

Think of a fall day when the sun illuminates the countless colors of the trees surrounding Chautauqua Lake. It may not be heaven, but until you get there it might be “as close as you were.”

Rolland Kidder is a resident of Stowe.