When the Fall Stops Whispering

Fall – Week 40 - On Peak and Purpose

In Her Nature is a year long exploration into the healing power of the natural world. Season by season, setting out to awaken the spirit, and rekindle joy. The weekly journal of a neighborhood, its plants and birds and creatures — and how they are helping repair a heart and rebirth a soul.

It happened while I wasn’t paying attention, the way the most significant shifts always seem to. I thought I was watching carefully, noting each gradual shift as autumn moved through its paces. One day the aspens were holding their color close, wearing just touches of gold at their edges. Then suddenly, though it couldn’t have been sudden, though it must have taken days I somehow missed. The mountains were ablaze.

This is what catches me off guard again and again about living here, how quickly things move in the Colorado high country. Where autumn elsewhere might linger and meander through October like a conversation with nowhere urgent to be, here it sprints. The window between first blush and full blaze feels impossibly narrow, measured in days rather than weeks. Part of me wants to slow it down, to ask the aspens to hold their brilliance just a little longer. To let me adjust to each shade before rushing toward the next. But the aspens aren’t waiting for permission.

There’s something almost violent about peak foliage when you’re not expecting it, something that can disrupt rather than decorate. Those perfect early autumn days I’d been so enjoying, with their honey light and quiet mornings. Their invitation to settle in and pay attention, suddenly feel like a prelude to something far more demanding. Peak simply arrives, whether you’re prepared or not. It doesn’t whisper patient questions into willing ears; it shouts declarations that leave no room for response. A chorus of color so loud it stops traffic on the mountain roads.

And people do stop. They flood the high passes with cameras and wonder, creating pilgrimages to witness what the aspens have decided to reveal. It’s both beautiful and slightly desperate, this collective human rush to see the spectacle before it passes. We know even as we’re looking that we’re witnessing something already dying, that the very intensity we’re chasing is the tree’s last urgent act before surrender.

I find myself torn. Part of me resents the disruption, misses those gentler days when fall was still unfolding in whispers. After months of relentless summer heat, those early autumn days felt like relief. Cool mornings, softer light, air you could finally breathe deeply. There was something manageable about that early autumn rhythm. Sustainable, generous with time, allowing space for reflection between each small change. That gentleness is something you can inhabit. You can build a life around gradual change, arrange your days around its measured presence.

But peak? Peak is performance. It’s maximum intensity compressed into an impossibly brief window. You can’t settle into peak; you can only witness it, chase it, try to catch it before it vanishes. Where early autumn invited me to linger, peak creates urgency. Where those quiet days felt like a meandering conversation, peak feels like last words before a door closes.

From my window, I can see how the gold creeps down the mountainside each day, moving from the high peaks toward the valley floor like a slow-motion wave. It follows the cold, this transformation, responding to night temperatures with the precision of ancient code. There’s intelligence in the timing even if there’s excess in the display. The trees somehow know collectively, mysteriously when to let go, when to stop holding on to what summer gave them and commit fully to what autumn demands.

Yet watching the aspens blaze against the evergreen backdrop of Clear Creek County, I have to ask: what if this isn’t disruption but honesty? What if this is simply what trees actually are when nothing is held in reserve? All those weeks of careful transformation leading to this: the unguarded truth. This explosion of gold and scarlet. Nothing held back, full expression before the end, complete commitment to being seen.

There’s a kind of courage in this. Not just about patience and letting go, but about boldness. About being seen without apology. Maybe the most honest thing you can do is abandon restraint entirely. To be loud when you have something to say, to blaze when you have fire in your belly, trusting that intensity and truth matter more than comfort or duration.

And in this season of my life I’m learning I can do both. The gentleness that wants to hold on carefully, to notice particular shapes and colors - and the fire that’s willing to be seen, to speak up, to burn bright when it matters. Maybe they’re not opposites. Maybe paying attention this closely is its own kind of strength.

I am indeed he person who catches falling leaves, who brings home interesting rocks and dried flowers, who arranges natural treasures on windowsills. But lately I’ve heard a call that has made a home in my chest, teaching me what the aspens know: there’s a time for holding carefully, and a time to burn without apology.

The aspens will hold this gold for maybe two more weeks, maybe less. Then the leaves will fall, the branches will stand bare, the mountains quiet again, the roads empty. For now, though, the mountains are on fire. And I’m learning to burn with them. To let the work matter enough to risk the intensity. To trust the season knows its time.

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—> What moments of natural wonder caught your attention this week? Please share your stories and photos in the comments below. Let’s experience nature’s gifts together.

As always, thank you so much for reading and supporting me.

Love,

Jane