The Fall of Fall

Quake.  To “shake, tremble, quiver, shudder, sway. Heave. Convulse.”  An aspen.  A quaking aspen parades leaves that flutter and dance in the wind.  Trembling at the slightest breeze, they cast glittering green of spring riches across your eyes.  Autumn has arrived, adorning the mountainsides with brilliant arrays of color, as if the hand of Nature painted them there.  Long-lasting greens transition to brilliant golds, which blossom into the deep ephemeral reds that are always hiding behind the prospect of an early frost or wind storm.  Quaking skies throw blustering snows that rip the colored ornaments from their limbs and scatter them about the ground like life’s confetti, leaving the trees barren.  Naked. 

I feel it.  I am alive.  I am baby green at the prospect of the life that lies ahead.  My few golden years know that I may be stripped naked before the red riches are ever reached, ripped clean and left naked to fend off the cold.  The promise lies in that there will always be another spring…