Ode to Color

This morning I almost wimped out and ran on the treadmill. It was chilly when I took Jin out first thing in the morning, and worse, it was windy. With a choice between "miles away from home and cold" or "mildly bored on the treadmill but warm," I was ready to choose the latter.

But compared to what we'll face three months from now, it wasn't all that cold, and I had this nice, new wind-resistant running jacket that my parents had gotten me in Chicago (my first wind-resistant running clothes ever), and I was in a surprisingly good running mood today. So I decided get over myself and get out the door. There will be plenty of time for treadmills later.

I'm so glad I did that. Fall is a great time for running. We have so many different types of trees around here that they never really all turn color at once. A few will begin as early as August. My roommate Stephanie and I decided that these are the trees that hate the winter. The moment the daylight begins to change, they decide it's time to shut off and say goodbye to the world for the next eight months. This would be me if I were a tree. But other, braver trees stick it out much longer. By the time the last tree has turned, most of the others will have lost their leaves completely.

This staggering of colors wasn't what I expected when people first described the brilliant Ann Arbor falls to me. My first couple years out here I kept waiting for that sudden burst of color that everyone promised would come, until I realized that by waiting, I had completely missed it. Right now is the best part of fall. Right now there is still plenty of green, but very few trees have begun to go bare, and all that pretty Ann Arbor green is interspersed with brilliant patches of red and orange and yellow. Sometimes this takes the form of a single, vivid, all-red tree surrounded by other trees that haven't even begun to turn, and sometimes it takes the form of a single tree that is all four colors simultaneously. This makes me very happy.

This morning I got to see the full range of color. I was going to run down to Plymouth (the street), but decided instead to go by the golf course: good decision. I was going to swing towards the medical center but decided instead to run out toward Longshore Drive along the river: great decision. I was going to run up Longshore, but decided instead to take the dirt trail that cuts through the trees right along the shore: fantastic decision. The whole run was accompanied by a completely random and absolutely perfect soundtrack on my iPod shuffle, and I came home feeling great.

When I was wandering around California last week I saw pumpkins and leaf garlands and multi-colored corn cobs springing up in windows in shopping centers, and it struck me that the whole United States observes Fall, even though a good portion of us don't really ever experience it. I observed Fall myself as a California child with only faint memories of Colorado autumns. But it took moving to Utah to understand that Fall was not like Santa Claus, that there were places where leaves really did turn color and fall from trees. And it took moving to Ann Arbor to understand that Fall is a much bigger concept than I ever imagined.

For my readers who live in places like California or Arizona or Texas, I'm not sure that the pictures here do the leaves justice. This is partly because I'm not a professional photographer, and partly because you just really have to be here, and partly because I took these pictures while on a walk with my dog, which meant they were all snapped one-handed with Jin straining on the leash in my other hand. "Let's stop and take a picture" is a really hard concept for him to understand. But at least they give you a taste. When it's not rainy or freezing or blustery, fall can be a real mood-booster, and I wanted to share that.