Every year during the middle of October, I head north to spend a blissful week in the mountain resort town of McCall, Idaho. Leaving Boise, the weather is warm and sunny. We experience glorious Indian summers here in the Treasure Valley. Usually sometime during late September a cold front will race through the area, blasting out the scorching days of lingering summer. But the cold front rarely includes a killing frost and the following days warm up to shorts-weather with temperate evenings. We know from the calendar that fall is around the corner, but it hasn’t yet touched Boise.
For those of you unfamiliar with my area, McCall, Idaho is one hundred miles north of Boise and about two thousand feet higher in elevation. The town hunkers around the outlet where Payette Lake drains into the Payette River. Cabins, varying from old rustic to new palatial, finger their way up both sides of the lake. What was once a timber and ranching town has metamorphosed into a popular recreational escape for Treasure Valley residents. Winter months lure snow lovers to downhill and cross country skiing, snow shoeing, and snowmobiling. During the summer, an armada of water craft ply the sparkling waters of Payette Lake. Hikers, bikers, horseback riders, fishermen, and backpackers fan into the surrounding mountains, cleansing their lungs of stale city air. Spring is this town’s equivalent of a bad-hair morning. Melting snow flows downhill to inundate every inch of unpaved ground with boot-sucking mud.
During the fall, the town more closely resembles its old, quiet, unassuming self. Driving or hiking the back roads, you may encounter a few hunters. You gage your elevation by the degree of color; the lowest aspen are still green, a little higher is a range of yellow aspen and red shrubbery, topped by the highest, bare-stemmed trees where a brief fall has already come and gone.
A bit of magic happens to Boise in my absence. During that one week, fall arrives. I know because of the two trees across the street from my house. They are green when I leave. The day I return they stand there, blushing at their yellow transformation. The rest of the trees in town are still untouched by fall, but the temperatures have changed enough to merit the summer/winter closet change-out, along with furnace inspection and fall gardening chores. The rest of Boise will soon follow my neighboring sentinels, turning the town into a dazzlingly clown of color.
Nel said:
These (pictures and videos) make me want to visit Idaho. The state gets a bad rap for being “boring”.
On second thought, could I be the boring one since I prefer tranquil and scenic towns?
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rangewriter said:
Nel, I’d never call Idaho boring. Conservative…red….redneck…yes. But not boring. It’s beautiful country and only gets more beautiful the farther north you go. And the state is chock full of tranquil, scenic, and (unfortunately) half dead towns. (Those do make for some awesome photo opps.)
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Priya said:
“blushing at their yellow transformation.” This is something I’d wanted to witness all of my life. Well, all of it since I’ve heard about this phenomenon. I have seen trees that look yellow or red during autumn, but not entire woods, or forests of it. Or line of trees alongside roads. It must be magical!
McCall is beautiful, too, Linda. It is a blessed life to be able to see this beauty.
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rangewriter said:
Priya, do trees not change colors and lose leaves in India? Perhaps there isn’t enough seasonal temperature change? I never thought of that. I do love autumn. Where I grew up (Wyoming) there was no fall. One day you noticed a few yellow leaves and 2 days later a huge wind storm had ripped all the leaves from the trees, no matter what color they were.
One thing I’d love to witness is Aurora Borealis. Then come to find out recently, I could from right here if I signed up for some sort of online Aurora Borealis website and learned when it might swing this far south and got up at 1 AM and traveled to a dark place to watch and…well…
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norell208 said:
Sounds like a wonderful time. Great descriptors!
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Snoring Dog Studio said:
I’ve experienced the Aurora Borealis and no one should die without that experience. It’s frightening and majestic and eerie. Yes, Idaho is at it’s prettiest right now. I don’t think I could ever live where the trees never changed color. The foothills, too, are changing color as well. Thank you for describing the scenes so beautifully, Linda. You have such a gift! You need to be a travel writer!
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rangewriter said:
Ah, Thanks SDS for the encouragment. But, waaa…I hate the travel writing genre. 99% of what I’ve seen bores me to tears.
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souldipper said:
Gorgeous country, RW. You capture it so well in print as well on camera. What a shot at sunset with the birds! Then the moon. You really have the eye, my friend.
I’ve seen the autumn change at its peak in Northern Ontario – it silences! It makes one forget about any other type of beauty. There is not a colour missed in its magnificence. Here on my island – West Coast BC – the leaves turn to gold mainly with the odd token red one – a burst of glory amongst the rest.
About the Northern Lights. Another time when I was awed speechless. In Alberta, we saw them regularly especially in the winter (probably because it darkens earlier).
Twenty years ago, I worked for 3 years in the far north – by Yukon and NorthWest Territories. Not only are the Aurora Borealis full of different colours up there, one can stand and hear them cracking! I thought people were teasing me when they told me I could get them to dance by clapping or whistling. Up there, it’s true. They bounce about in response to noise. Obviously they were very close and any vibration caused by noise affected them.
You know what I love? There’s a lot of theory and speculation about what they are, but unless I’m now uninformed, the reason they appear is still a mystery.
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rangewriter said:
Thanks so much for your kind words about my writing and photography attempts. West Coast BC is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I’ve never been there in the fall, but I can only imagine that the gold highlights would silence.
Your experiences with Aurora Borealis fascinate me. I had no idea that the respond to noise…particularly something as sublte as a woman’s clapping hands. I’m now even more driven to experience their mystery.
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Nandini said:
I love the picture. So colorful! You live in such a pretty place. Great. 🙂
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rangewriter said:
Thanks for stopping by, Nandini. I visited your blog and love your formatting and your images. I didn’t realize that using a dark background saves power. Makes sense, though. I’ll have to consider that.
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