We’re breaking records this autumn in Denver: highest November temps on this day and that; latest first snow in a century. The first snow has yet to happen, stresses me by its delay. What if we never have snow again? The Colorado River is already drying up. Our lack of rain is also record-breaking. My front porch petunias and geraniums and the parking strip flowerbed have never continued blooming so late. Normally by mid-October I’ve dumped their frozen remains and stored the pots. When I rake leaves, the dust from bone-dry ground powders the air.
Parking strip flowerbed
We still wear our masks to the store, Colorado being afflicted by a Covid surge. Our hospitalizations are higher than they’ve been in a year. Elective surgeries are being cancelled. We’re running out of ICU beds. Between 80 – 90% of Covid patients are unvaccinated. It makes me tired. The people I know who work in hospitals are tired. Most of us are removed from that frontline, carry on as if there were no war a few blocks from us, a war prolonged by its voluntary victims.
Red Leaf Fall
Still, since we’ve been vaccinated, we gather with vaccinated friends and family, resume routines abandoned nearly two years ago. Some of those old routines may never return. I can’t imagine attending anything with a crowd ever again. Bye-bye movie openings, jammed restaurants, concerts. We’re planning a small gathering for Thanksgiving, all involved having had their boosters. Glimmers of light, surge notwithstanding.
City Park
Still, this long, dry autumn has given us a gorgeous display in Denver, the bluest skies above golden and carmine leaves, air mostly free of last summer’s hazy pollution. I’ve been walking with no more than a jean jacket, can’t stop taking photos. This drought is as ominous as our disease surge, but for now, what a flare of glory we’ve been granted as the trees begin revealing their bones.
City Park, November 2021
I always love your writings (except the Spanish, I don’t do well with Spanish- my bad),. I must say in all of my many, many, many (that’s three ‘many’s) years I’ve experienced Denver autumns I’ve never seen one as beautiful. Of course we all know the frightening down side, will it ever snow Again? Let’s enjoy it while we can.
Thanks, Al. I have been enjoying it. So many people of Spanish-speaking origins apologize to me for their lack of Spanish, but I never hear those originally of Greek, or Dutch or Slovak roots apologizing for not knowing those languages. The fact is, after a generation or three here, most people don’t speak the languages of their origins any more. I guess Spanish is different, though. After all, it’s America’s second language these days and no one speaks Dutch.
Turning west down the hill toward the Platte River, blue sky and snowy mountains always tug at my heart, especially with petunias still blooming in their front porch pots.
I am glad that floods, fires, tsunamis, tornados, volcanos, and earthquakes don’t plague Denver (OK, those last two are not related to climate change, as far as I know), but Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow. I’m mostly concerned about the Aspen Skiing Company and Vail Resorts, Inc. and the families of their CEOs, of course. Oh, and Planet Earth and its people.