Yet another Paul Simon song title. That man was a poetic genius!
Fall is drawing to a close. The Holiday Season is fast upon us! But before I close this chapter I want to share something I've really appreciated this autumn. Something that has been hiding in plain sight until my eyes were opened to it.
The color brown.
Brown is SO underrated. To us it's the color of poo. The color of rot. Beige equals boring. Brown shoes don't make it.
Supposedly Inuit people have hundreds of words for snow. I wish I had that many for the browns I encountered.
Brown is beautiful. It's chocolate. Coffee with cream. Hot cocoa on a cold day.
First I was struck by the grasses and weeds. At the edge of town there's a park I have an affinity to. It's mostly grassland being allowed to return to its feral state. That's where I first discovered the palette. There were swales of grass that still clung to its green undercoat, but was topped with beautiful silvery brown stems. The whole field reminded me of wild rabbit fur, and looked just as soft. Here and there it was punctuated with stands of now cinnamon-hued weeds, and dark chocolate branches with whimsical spiky seed pods, and the soft oatmeal color of the towering plumed phragmites. A symphony of brown.
Then there were the trees.
The divas of autumn are the maple trees, which go out in blazes of fiery red, luminous yellow, and day-glo orange. Some turned a startling deep pink like undiluted frozen pink lemonade, or the inside of a ruby red grapefruit. Because the season has progressed in fits and starts I've noticed trees of multiple color, a crown of red fading to gold that transitions to green at the bottom. I saw what I think were hemlocks that were a mind-bending golden red against a crisp blue sky. And sweet gum leaves do some pretty amazing things with magenta and yellow. But my favorites by far this season have been the oaks.
One thing I've learned from having fashionista daughters is that dressing well is not about flash and sparkle. Someone in the know can spot a quality piece of clothing by its clean lines and good tailoring. It's tasteful. Less is more. Think Jackie Kennedy and her Oleg Cassini suits. Oak trees are the Jackie Kennedys of the woods. Classic and refined.
Their transition is far more subtle than the show-off trees. Some imperceptibly shift from green to bronze. I examined an oak that looked olive green at first glance, but was really composed of leaves that were still green, some that were soft brown, and some burnt orange. I drove under some oaks whose individual branches were two-toned: harvest gold on top and rich dark brown on the bottom. Some of the golden oaks had individual leaves lined with brown, looking like nothing so much as slightly over baked sugar cookies, which are the tastiest after all.
Again, I'm amazed by the variations on a theme and I struggle to describe the colors. Oak leaves have such an understated beauty. Some as dark as milk chocolate, others the soft brown of buckskin. A few turn the deep purple-red of Bing cherries. A stand of trees can be a wonderland of chestnut, mahogany, and bittersweet - each slightly different from the other.
Oaks are also loathe to drop their leaves, so the color lingers. While driving to work I noticed that the distant tree lines that are normally the smokey gray of bare limbs wore a distinctly russet tone.
Usually in February or March I start to rail against the monochromatic world, impatiently awaiting the green of spring. Maybe this year I'll stop and remind myself that it's brown. Like cinnamon-sugar toast and cappuccino.
Simply beautiful.
No comments:
Post a Comment