Fall Colors Trip

We celebrated our 50th class reunion at the Academy of the New Church in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania on October 9-12th. Four high school chums - Bill and Carol Kronen, wife Betsy and I, headed out by car for two weeks of digitally capturing a million fall leaves as "they brighten up and let go," just as we hope to do at the end of our lives! Whale-watching and moose hunting (all with just our cameras) were on our agenda.

We clicked away to Deep River, Connecticut, and enjoyed Verne and Carolyn Wehr's lovely home on a lake. Thanksgiving dinner came early!
We hung out two days on the Cape Cod hook, whale-watching from Falmouth to Provincetown. We returned to Walden Pond, to the Minute Man statue, staying at the Colonial Inn, where my hero, Henry David Thoreau once lived. We love and always have loved Concord, Massachusetts. Concord initiated the Revolutionary War with its Minute Men, and led the charge of the American Renaissance, with great thinkers such as Emerson and Thoreau, Hawthorne and Whitman, Dickinson, and Longfellow. From Concord we travelled to Bar Harbor, and from Bar Harbor to St. Stephens, New Brunswick.

At St. Johns, we boarded a fast car ferry to Digby, Nova Scotia, and drove all the way past Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Eastern Passage. After the sights of Nova Scotia, we drove all the way up to Baddeck on Cape Breton Island to take in the vast talents of Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated in his museum. Impressive! We came back to Bangor, Maine, via New Glasgow, and wallowed in the beauties of the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Green Mountains of Vermont. After forty years of wishing, we avidly drank in Bennington, Vermont, with its Battle Monument, Bennington Pottery, and the Bennington Museum, where my Grandfather Gilbert Haven Smith has oil paintings from where he lived in South Shaftsbury, Vermont.

On our last day of the trip, on Sunday, October 26th, we were delighted to attend the Cadel Chapel (It's a Cathedral, actually) at West Point. We soaked in the most beautiful music from its male choir, including the tenderly sung hymn, "I Love You, Lord, and I Lift My Voice," which floated out to us from the nave. We were touched by readings of one of our favorite Psalms, Psalm 19, by a guest speaker from the American Bible Track Society, which that day donated one thousand Bibles to the new freshman plebes, just as it has done for a hundred years....

...Leaves surrounded us on all sides on our 3,000-plus mile Fall adventure. The yellow-purple White Ash leaves stand out in October, but after they change color, they are the first to fall after a heavy frost. Red Oak leaves glower at the paler Pin Cherry, whose purple-green leaves change to yellow, followed by the late blooming Quaking Aspen. Speckled Alder refuses to change color and alternates with the White Birch golden leaves, while the single-leaf Tupelo blushes next to the three-leaf stems of the American Mountain Ash with their bright berries and red leaves, prominent on high ridges in early fall. The Yellow Birch, along with White Birch and Mountain Birch, color the high slopes bright yellow in early October.

...The pale yellow Linden or Basswood leaves had no luck hiding all the skinny Sumac dark red and purple leaves, with their fuzzy twigs resembling antlers "in velvet."Mid-October's most prominent colors came from the yellow, orange, and sometimes red leaves of the Sugar Maple. The Red or Swamp Maple stands out early with bright red--with yellow and orange--color leaves, but it's the first to bare all. The aging American Beech leaves seem full of veins. The yellow leaves fade to bronze, but often stay on the tree all winter long. The Witch Hazel's yellow leaves provide camouflage for its small yellow flowers. The Striped Maple's huge leaves turn bright yellow or even creamy. The Large-Toothed Aspen brags with its larger leaves, but has the same colors as its smaller cousin, the Quaking Aspen....

...The names of places we encountered flashed with poetry, rhythm and humor. Where else but New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces could you find these couplings?

- Bucks Port, Bar Harbor and Passamaquoddy.
- Bath, Boothbay Harbor and Christmas Cove.
- Round Pound, Nobleboro and Hog Island.
- Mashpee, Mushaboom, Meddybemps and Ecum Secum:

(that's right--Ecum Secum! No wonder Stephen King wrote maniacal novels--he's a Maine-iac, and not that far from Nova Scotia...)

- Pictou, Caribou, Necum Teuch and Tatamagouche.
- Lunenburg, Bayhead and Pugwash.
- Oromockto, Stewiale, Memramcook and Bangor, Maine....