TP. 56  AUTUMN COLORS

It’s late September, and there is a mad dash by emotional humans fixated on nature’s color transition from a lively green to a kaleidoscope of bright colored death. The aspens, birches, and poplar display a range from sunlight yellow to pumice banana. The oaks, ash, and elms strut an onion orange to midnight mellon. And, the many species of maples broadcast an intense array of vibrant reds to succulent scarlets. Even a species of conifers likes to join in the parade as the larch or tamaracks turn its green needles into burnt orange matchsticks for a few weeks and then jettison them down to the earthen floor. The entire forest follows suit and undresses its leafy foliage of now brown clothing into the winds. Time to go to sleep for 3 to 8 months, depending on latitude and attitude. The kings of color are the strategically placed hard maples that display metal flake reds to the mammals that tread under their canopies. The best location to find these electrifying trees is in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. Find the areas of long ago that harvested the element of iron, which helped Americans defend this country from its enemies by building rifles, cannons, and battleships. Amongst these mining areas are cemeteries of iron miners long dead in unprotected shallow graves. Here, you will find select maples that have sent its roots to penetrate into the rotten wooden coffins of those iron miners and have slowly sucked out the red dye of iron from these beaten men. The concentrated dye has now been infused into the intense red leaves as a short tribute to the men who dragged out the iron ore and made this country a force to be (w)reckened with.