The Ephemeral Beauty of Autumn

I have written about the ephemeral beauty of autumn enough times that each year I think I’ve said it all. But there is always something new, whether it previously went unnoticed or whether it’s something you’ve never seen before at all. As fall foliage begins to out-compete the fading beauty of wildflowers, my mind remains with those little flowers, and how each time I encounter one in bloom so late in the season, it provides a small jolt of a thrill, as if I were seeing it for the first time.

A fall favorite is a member of the evening primrose family, which blooms well after its kin have gone to seed. The first time I encountered it, I mistook it for the brilliant red penstemon that I had only seen in southern Utah, but there it appeared: in the Snake River Canyon.

I was on that trail in late September nearly 40 years ago to wallow in the beauty of bigtooth maple, a close relative of the sugar maple and known to drape the dry mountainsides with the same scarlet hues that draw leaf-peepers to New England every year. The maple did not disappoint, but my husband and I decided to keep hiking beyond the maple zone for views of the river and mountains beyond.

I bent to the trail at one point, intrigued by a recently shed snakeskin. And there I saw the flower, poking out of a crack in a shale outcrop, the same color as the maple leaves.

The flowers were past full bloom and slightly limp from frost, but I photographed them anyway. I thought they looked like penstemon, but the red ones weren’t supposed to grow this far north. Maybe with my photos I could identify them later, I thought. Meanwhile, I hurried to catch up to Don who was well ahead of me on the trail.

When I received the box of slides (remember slides?) I compared my images to photos I had of Eaton’s “firecracker” penstemon from a trip to Zion National Park. There was a resemblance between the flowers—they were long and red—but they weren’t identical. I looked more closely at the flower shape: mine had petals that flared at the edges and looked a bit ruffled; the penstemon wasn’t like that. Mine had stigmas that extended well beyond the length of the petals; the penstemon did not. Mine had leaves with fine hairs and were alternate; the penstemon had opposite leaves. Finally I counted the petals. Mine had four; penstemons have five.

The petal number led me past the families I could easily dismiss: I was pretty sure I wasn’t looking at a mustard, gentian or clematis. There wasn’t much resemblance to fireweed but I checked the section of a comprehensive flora book titled Onagraceae (evening primrose).

To my surprise and relief, I found an illustration in the book that matched the flower I’d seen. Finally. Recognition and amazement lit up my brain; I felt like a life-lister bird enthusiast who had just seen an eagle owl in a cottonwood.

Ever since, the fire chalice (Epilobium canum) has become a sought-after sign of fall. It’s fussy about habitat, preferring dry and rocky crannies, and because the few places I’ve seen it are widely scattered and the patches are small, I wonder how it finds new places to establish. Wind, I guess; its seeds look a lot like those of fireweed, with little hairy parachutes.

Now I compare the wonder of seeing a plant for the first time and the wonder I feel when I encounter it again. It’s not a total surprise, but it makes me feel somehow privileged to have found something rare that I now recognize.

The plant doesn’t even have to be rare. Another fall favorite is the hoary tansyaster (Dieteria/Macaranthera canescens). Dry slopes are bereft of any color other than straw-tan until you happen into a patch of these little beauties. There are dozens of others, depending on where you live and the elevation.

From mid-September through the early days of October, we are treated to blazing colors in aspen, maple, chokecherry and other shrubs. It’s easier to look up than down, and impossible to walk more than a few steps without stopping to stare at the leaves and snap a photo or 10. Sometimes a slight breeze will stir the leaves into motion. And it’s wonderful to close one’s eyes and just listen to them, those gentle slaps of waxy, translucent leaves, so soon to fall.

While I never get tired of tramping among the trees, I am still drawn to the late bloomers, or second-bloomers. Recently, some mountain false-dandelion and roundleaf harebell in bloom gave me an extra shot of good cheer as I wandered through stand after stand of golden aspen. And whenever I find fire chalice in bloom, I’m reminded of that first encounter, the delicate snakeskin, and the wonder I felt upon finding them together. Such memories accumulate into a deep love of place, a sense of belonging to it, and solace during a time when information overload, concern about the future, and general anxiety can send me into a pit of despondency.

So I get out there as often as possible, even if I only have an hour. It’s the combination of experiencing the wild and wondrous world around me, and remembering other times when I have done the same, that sends me back home to waiting chores and emails in a buoyant frame of mind.