Autumn Reverie

“Look at those colors!” I exclaimed to my husband yesterday as I pointed out the roadside scenery. The trees were gorgeous in their fall glory. We were on our way to Tulsa through the rolling Osage hills. Valleys were spread with a multi-colored blanket, the rounded treetops the crowded puffs of a cozy comforter.

Here I’d been wanting to go to Tennessee or New England to view the autumn foliage, and we had this riot of colors right here at home. Maybe it was the grey, damp skies that set off the Technicolor panorama before us. The yellow hickories and yellow-green elms were bursts of sunlight among the glowing red-orange embers that were oak and hardwood leaves. Individual maples wore a color wheel of vermillion, dark red, bright red, yellow, orange, brown, green and yellow green.

Before moving to the flat plains of the Kay county wheat lands at age 10, I’d lived in this hilly area of Oklahoma, but I don’t remember appreciating or noticing the seasonal color changes of trees. That was probably due to the obliviousness of childhood, but I wonder if the pastime and hobby of those known as “peepers” was even popular back then. Today thousands mark their calendars and schedule vacations according to the best leaf color in any part of the country at any given time. People are more mobile now and have more free time than back then, when we had more important things to think about, like having enough wood cut for the winter.

We had taken the 2 hour trip to visit the hospital beds of friends involved in a serious car crash. Stopping by the hospital canteen for coffee, my eyes fell on two men seated at a table. Though one looked vaguely familiar, I couldn’t help looking intently at the other man. He looked more than vaguely familiar. His eyes, expression and facial features almost made me think I was looking at my dad! I tried not to stare at him, but when I stole a sideways glance, he was looking at me, too. It was uncanny. A little later I found out they were brothers of our pastor, who was one of the accident victims. I didn’t want to embarrass the man by telling him my impression, so I let it go.

Maybe it was the nostalgia of being in this area again, or the remembering of wood smoke curling above humble country houses in the crisping autumn weather that made me identify with the careworn, kind face of a stranger. Or perhaps a common gene of my slight Indian heritage ran through these local people that made them seem slightly familiar. My tall, handsome father’s strong features of jet black hair, straight posture and tanned complexion had faded with years, his skin becoming fragile and papery as the golden brown leaves blowing outside, the ones evoking a memory on the wind.