The Inner Fall Foliage
By Dave Anderson

On still September mornings, fog shrouds New Hampshire river valleys. Leaves fall with an audible cascade. Rose-pink dawn with frost on the grass promises a bright, aster-blue afternoon when children rake-up leaves for the sheer joy of jumping and rolling among them. Autumn afternoons fade as chilly nights bring mingled scents of wood-smoke and candle-singed jack-o-lantern.

Crisp apples, dry corn stalks and falling leaves are the essences of autumn, capable of conjuring childhood memories. Like the sound of unseen wild geese overhead migrating south, the subtle psychological effects may catch you by surprise. Let them.

Fall foliage tourism is big business. New England tourism officials develop "peak foliage" forecast maps for broadcast by television meteorologists. But fall foliage is more than an economic opportunity. Fall foliage is a mood, a singular seasonal emotion conveyed by seemingly inanimate trees. It’s more spectacular than a natural phenomenon, it’s a spiritual phenomenon. Changing hues of neighborhood trees provide an irresistible metaphor for life, death and renewal.

Falling leaves work on your soul.

To walk under blazing red maples or kick through fallen leaves resets an ancient inner clock.

All too soon, a wind-driven rainstorm will shred that colorful tapestry, stripping once colorful shade trees down to their bare, naked limbs.

Autumn glory in New England is always fleeting, heartbreaking and nostalgic…

… particularly for Boston baseball fans.

Flurries of rustling leaves blowing down empty Yawkey Way outside Fenway Park soon give way to less colorful flurries - cold and white.