6:44 a.m. 52 degrees, wind N 0 mph. Sky: clear, at the moment; clouds have not yet taken shape; summer morning, autumn light. Wetlands: twin bands of mist, thin and smoky; one floating above the other, open in the middle; ruby-crowned maples torch the far shore. Pond: shrinking surface, expanding shoreline, reflections of yellow maples and deep green pines more interesting than what's actually there, a couple of bubbles. Inside the woods, more green than yellow, outside varying degrees of yellow, red, orange, and brown.
AOR: a tiny red eft, removed from the road and released beneath a canopy of maidenhair ferns
Background vocals: red-shouldered hawk, overhead, announces its position in the valley; white-throated sparrows in a grapevine tunnel; the whirring wings of a grouse; a pod of tin-horn nuthatches in the pines; a whispering brown creeper; crow, blue jay, and a lonesome goose
Striped maple leaves blanched a pale yellow. Red maple leaves burn, cold incandescence hot enough to stop traffic. Yellow leaves of ash and maple drying and browning on the twig, the color of overheated butter.
Some trees have a presence, most often the reciprocity of size or shape, but, in late September, Color sometimes calls attention to a once anonymous tree. This morning, for instance, sunlight settles into the crown of citrus-colored sugar maple, a tall tree, neon bright, that stands in my neighbor's front yard, just below ledge. A few chickadees convene in the branches, as animated as ever, hobnobbing amid an amusement park of leaves. I stop, consider a tree I've walked by a thousand times but never honestly noticed. Limbs sweep up at forty-five-degree angles, mostly on the south side, and the main stem rises and splits a dozen times until the crown splays out into a filigree of twigs, each bearing a bouquet of leaves. Chickadees, black and white against tangerine, a gift of the shortening days. By early October, the maple recedes into obscurity. And the chickadees, inch-worms gone, engage the feeders . . . a gluttonous matinee, a lifeline that buoys me all winter.