---
template: single
point: 33.9448641194789,-83.38856934340312
location: Athens,Georgia,United States
image: 2008/fall.jpg
desc: Fall, Autumn, call it what you like, just remember, the leaves fall for the tree every year, but the tree never falls for the leaves. By Scott Gilbertson
dek: The trees are in full technicolor swing. The land is slowly dying, and not just because it's Fall, we're also in the middle of a prolonged drought and this year the leaves are opting for a James Dean-style, leave-a-good-looking-corpse exit. If you're a leaf and you've got to go, do it with class.
pub_date: 2007-11-14T02:25:17
slug: fall
title: Fall
---
The trees are in full technicolor swing. The land is slowly dying, and not just because it's Fall [1], we're also in the middle of a prolonged drought -- this year being one of the worst -- but this year the leaves are opting for a James Dean-style, leave-a-good-looking-corpse exit. If you're a leaf and you've got to go, do it with class.
Out my back door is a spectrum ranging from ochre to vermillion with all the middle hues as well, burnt sienna, tawny cinnamon, sorrel, ginger, puse and more nestled among the staid green of those that refuse to give and the more russet and mahogany tones of indifferent Oak trees. It's the beech and maple that really turn though. Almost makes you think of a certain Rush song, but we won't go there.
Perhaps it's a result of growing up in Los Angeles, but Fall never ceases to amaze me and I feel a bit bad for those who don't get to experience it every year. When I worked at the restaurant in Northampton we used to mock the leaf peepers, but we understood why they came.
It's part of the trade off I guess. My Los Angeles friends aren't running their heater and still wearing a sweater. It gets cold here, not as cold as New England, but certainly colder than coastal California. But I'll take the cold in exchange for some tangible markers of the passing seasons, the passing time, lest it simple blur together and slip away invisibly.
Just bear in mind that only part of it is passing. As a friend of mine used to say, the leaves fall for the tree every year, but the tree will never fall for the leaves.