His luminescent, champagne colored coat gleaming in the dappled sunlight, I walk my terrier, Frodo while occasionally bending down to gather another unique leaf to add to my bouquet of leaves to press later. It reminds me of searching for seashells on the glittery beach. A realization suddenly dawns, the best leaves seem to be bottoms up with a hint of their vivid color visible on their undersides. Also, I notice that I am collecting a lot of sugar maple leaves in a variety of colors. As a bibliophile I value my thousands of books, so I wonder how I will press all these unique leaves later.
I am especially fascinated by the sugar maples’ leaves in autumn, which make the woods particularly prismatic. I was curious and looked up information on them yesterday. Ironically the most clear and succinct source was from the New York City Parks, “Sugar maple leaves have five pointed lobes, each pointing in a different direction, and the leaves can turn a range of colors, from bright yellow to orange to a vivid red-orange – sometimes, all of these colors may even be visible on the same tree!” In White Plains, New York I used to witness this phenomenon on the 260+ year old sugar maple that towered over our 1920s Dutch colonial atop Battle Hill. Sometimes, I imagined the two cannons roaring on the hill and George Washington running by our tree as he dropped back to Yorktown to fortify it and stop the British for the winter. As the green seeped out of our Grandfather Maple’s leaves, the fall show began with bright yellow, and then some branches transformed to glowing orange. The finale was when the whole canopy turned a deep scarlet that seemed to outdo the sunset. Sugar maples are so unique because in the spring they can supply sap to turn into amber syrup; however, in the fall they have provided the most amazing foliage show in the forest for eons. What a superlative tree!