The North Country’s Revenge

Every spring, I desire revenge.

Spring comes to the entire rest of the northern hemisphere before it gets to us, you see.

For months, from February on, I look at your photos of snowdrops, of crocus, of hellebores and daffodils.

I see tiny buds sprouting on your trees and read your descriptions of warm, sweet-smelling breezes. All while my world and any promise of spring are still covered in drifts of snow. I get a little bitter, looking at your spring.

And, by the time spring arrives to me and my snowdrops and daffodils show their pretty faces, people are tired of looking at snowdrops and daffodils and have moved on from the rapture of spring.

It’s not just me—Facebook users and bloggers all over the Northeast know my pain.

But, this is the time of year we get our revenge!

Because we have autumn in the North Country of upstate New York, in the Adirondacks, and all over New England.

We have glorious, perfect autumn here. It comes early and seems to last and last.

We have apples. We have pumpkins. We have mountains and lakes and a sky that is Adirondack blue. Click on the thumbnail photos and drink it in!

 

Or at least the sky is Adirondack blue when it isn’t some moody and evocative shade of autumn.

We have oaks and poplars, and birches and beeches, and ash trees, and their leaves all turn fabulous colors.

But, more important, we have maple trees.

We have maples that turn flaming red and orange. They aren’t satisfied with giving us the gift of sap for maple syrup in the spring. Every fall, the maple trees up the ante on themselves, and they give us glory.

This photo is not the most spectacular but it shows exactly what this part of the world looks like right now. All the ingredients—the colorful foothills of the Adirondacks, the remnants of corn that has been stored as ensilage for cows, the bright trees against an Adirondack blue sky, and the ladder reaching into an apple tree, providing access to that perfect autumn fruit.

So, in the spring, when you are parading your colors and beauty, I’ll be enjoying them. But, I’ll also be sighing and waiting for mine, in October.

Revenge is sweet.

I wish I could say I took this photo but it’s by Brendan Wiltse. https://www.facebook.com/brendan.wiltse.photography/