As the summer heat begins to dissipate, what happens every year happens in our mountains and spreads to our valleys.
Trees and bushes sense the longer nights and shorter days and shut down for the year.
The display they leave before the leaves fall is variable depending on the quality of the water year. Even so, a below average water year can have some amazing color when you catch the leaves with the right angle of the sun.
Nothing signifies the coming cold to me as the glow of aspen as they illuminate in the sharpened angle of the autumn sun.
The sound and smell of the leaves is something I never tire of. The sound of a cool autumn wind dropping thousands of aspen leaves is as systematic of the fall to me as a football game at Rice/Eccles or Lavell Edwards stadium.