Trees are pretty.

This is it, the time of year for which I love Portland most. This area has the longest fall ever. To my once-Alaskan body, it feels almost like there is no winter, that fall stretches on until you start to wonder if there are any other seasons left and spring finally shows up. Even the cute little snowstorms that utterly sideline life here wouldn't have heralded the start of Winter-for-reals in Fairbanks. They would have been forshadowing at most. Plus, smack in the middle of the worst months here you still see the odd 65 degree sunny day, and that just can't be part of W-f-r in any sort of manly definition.

Today it's 70 degrees, the sun is shining and the air is crisp and clean. To say there are a lot of different kinds of deciduous trees here is just not adequate. The variety of maples alone is incredible, and this is their moment to burst into flame, or melt into purples, or light up with gold. Also, a perk of living in a homogenized carton of townhomes is that they have these nice men who come and blow it all away twice a week.

It has been a nice fall all around. On our Montana road trip last week, the larch were a delicate yellow that looked like sunlight itself was sitting among the pines. In all the years I've done that drive (since infancy, dude- just ask J about my love for the 10,000 Silver Dollar Bar and you'll understand it is an infatuation held over from elementary days), I don't think I had ever seen it right at the peak of color, and it looked like holiday candles smell. There is something so Bachian in a mountain covered in trees shaped alike, half christmassy pine and half golden shadows. I kept thinking about the Goldberg variations, and I promise I'm not usually fruity like that.