I have written here several times about the magnificent view to the north and rear of my house in Columbia, Maryland. The deck on the back of my house looks out over a pond some hundred feet in diameter half filled with water reeds and surrounded by trees. Those trees are now creating a display I don’t ever remember the like of. Yesterday, a warm day for November, I ate lunch on the deck and surveyed my realm.
A young tree grows ten feet or so to the north of the western half of my deck. It is not yet as tall as the house and is surrounded by trees twice to three times its height. What distinguishes it is the brilliant and luminous yellow of its leaves. When caught in the late morning sun shining from the southeast, it fairly shimmers. Looking at it takes my breath away. It is beauty incarnate.
Directly across the pond, among the tall trees is one now vivid in orange. A few feet to the east is a much shorter tree whose yellow coloring is demure compared to the one by my deck. I see no red trees behind my house, but there is one in front whose leave are intensely crimson.
I am, in short, surrounded by the dazzling colors of fall. They seem more radiant to me this year than at any time I can remember. I wonder if the heavy rains of last winter and spring might be the cause.
Whatever the reason for the display, I’m grateful and humbled to be able to witness it.
Tom Glenn, Writer 