I’m sure there’s at least been a moment or two in your life when the viewing of fall foliage took on a bit of a macabre hue in your mind’s eye. In some sense when you come to Boone to view the leaves in fall you know it’s the viewing of the beauty of the death of leaves across the slopes and ridges of the western North Carolina High Country.
The leaves are leaving–that’s what they do best, afterall–and we watch them beautifully flame out of existence after taking them for granted all summer.
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I wonder how the other leaves feel. The leaves in your backyard left behind to die as you drive to the western North Carolina mountains to watch a more exotic, fiery death on Grandfather Mountain or from your window at the cabin or from the porch of your restaurant where you watch the hills flame over.
Personally I’d love to flame out so beautifully, especially after a life of green anonymity among the branches, and leave with one final symphony for the eyes of motorists along the Blue Ridge Parkway Viaduct in the shadow of Beacon Heights.
That’s what the scientists don’t tell you and never could. They don’t tell you that the final draining of chlorophyll from the veins and the faces of leaves actually produces a weeks-long song that humans can only perceive as the sight of the fire of fall.
If it’s quiet enough, you can seriously nearly hear it, especially in the mountains between 3,000 and 5,000 feet.
At least that’s what I’d like to believe. Regardless of what you might believe about this orange and gold and red symphony, do try to enjoy it.