We had a wonderful time leaf peeping in the 'Dacks, but I have to report that I also had what might be termed a dendrolator's Dark Night of the Soul. Not in the dark - it was in the spectacular glow of sunlit autumnal foliage, realizing that we were thrilling to leaves and colors just as the trees to whom they belonged were letting them go.
Although we were constantly applauding, nobody was putting on a show for us. The pigments that gave us colors we deliriously grasped for names for (claret? pink grapefruit? rhubarb? blood?) had served some other purpose once. At that chlorphyl-filled time, the leaves were green because they absorbed reds and yellows. Titillating the likes of us by bouncing the golds and scarlets back at us was never the point! By the time the trees elicit gasps from tree peepers like us, the leaves' work is done - except decomposing on the forest floor. It was like showing up for the curtain call of a theatrical performance, or indeed at the stage door, 
unaware of and incurious about the play that had just concluded. At one point, as we tried to position ourselves to get the best reflections in a lake, I was overcome with a sense of the absurdity of it all. Here we were, human visitors, seeking not only the spectacle of the leaves for which the trees had no more use, in colors never meant for
sharing, but seeking to see them twice! Spectres of spectres! Isn't there something morbid about the whole thing? I took comfort in knowing that we visit in all seasons we can, noting the kaleidoscopic ensemble of the forest from floor to canopy. (Indeed, the floor is the roof of a deeper world, peeping out through the wild variety of mushroom fruiting bodies.) Still, I had to confess a particular rapture produced by the flaring colors of the fall - I'm one of those people who say "fall is my favorite season." Why not spring? Or summer, which I tend to dismiss as dull. Leaf peeper's delight is not about but despite the trees, yet it's real.
The treeless Klimty pic above is from the Adirondack Experience, a board where visitors leave their admissions stickers on their way out. The others show leaves on their way out.
