TOLEDO MAGAZINE

Snapshots of the season's symphony of color

11/11/2017
BLADE STAFF
  • FEA-FallColors15

    Wauseon players get set to begin the first quarter of the Friday, September 29 football match up at Liberty Center. Despite muted color on the trees, autumn is in full bloom in Northwest Ohio.

    The Blade/Katie Rausch
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  • The autumn chill has finally arrived, if not yet the cold that attends the heart of December. Along with that chill comes a carnival of colors, proof that fall will not go gentle into winter’s night.

    We asked Blade photographers to capture some of these autumnal moments for today’s Toledo Magazine. A few of their pictures focus on people, but the bulk of them celebrate nature, the changing hues of plants and trees, the majesty of a cormorant.

    It’s human nature to savor the last vestiges of summer, and that too they caught with their lenses: A high school football team in the twilight of its season. A mother and daughter scouting pumpkins at a rural farm. People strolling along the banks of the Maumee River or enjoying the airy pleasures of a walk in a Metropark as leaves threaten to tumble from the trees. It is a threat being executed en masse now.

    Come fall, nature puts on its go-to-church clothes: Mums robust in their purple pride. Amber corn stalks standing sentry in harvested fields. Gourds of orange and green and white. The giddy delight of milkweed seeds taking flight.

    And always in October and November, a pageant of leaves as colorful as revelers at Mardi Gras. The cool weather was late to arrive this year, leaving scores of trees to bide their time. But arrive it finally did, fueling a visual alchemy rivaled only by its springtime counterpart. What was green became gold. Temperate breezes acquired a frosty bite.

    Scores of poets have celebrated the rites of autumn over the centuries, extolling its pivotal role in the cycle of life. Their poems have run the gamut from nostalgic to melancholy, from romantic to darkly defiant.

    Even today it remains human nature to be awed by transformation, to only grudgingly submit to the winds of change.

    Some have even come to view the season as a time of epiphany, as did the French philosopher Albert Camus. He wrote, “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”

    As the length of daylight quickly dwindles, those flowers are now in full bloom.