I took this photograph on 15 September, and you can hardly even see the tree, or much else, because I got so caught up with the sunset. Anyway, it’s the same tree that I photographed on 10 September last year, the one that marks for me the beginning of autumn. I think we decided then that it’s a spisslønn, Acer platanoides. the Norway maple, not to be confused with Acer pseudoplatanus, the sycamore tree.
A Bad Guide 
I remember this beautiful tree. Here in Nova Scotia we have lots of maples, many of which turn bright red in the fall. Usually October is the prime time for tourists coming to see the foliage, here and farther North, but this year you barely see any sign of fall yet (except that the weather is cooler than last month). Apparently the fall is seriously behind schedule.
Such beauty, the heart skips a beat!
I do love seeing the changing hues of the changing seasons, and by that I do not mean just the bright colors of certain fall trees. But I always think it odd that swarms of people make special trips to see the fall colors. It gets odder when the leaf-peeping branch of the tourist industry then generates “news”: Leaves turning later than usual this year. Leaves turning earlier than usual. Maples not quite as bright as usual this year. Most highways fully repaired from hurricane damage in time for use by fall-foliage-seeking visitors. (Do some of the visiting leaf-peepers scan these bulletins in advance when planning their travels? Doesn’t it detract from the enjoyment a little, to be working ahead of time to find out what you will be seeing?)
Crown, it probably is a maple, but have you ever gone right up close to it and looked?
Yeah, the “leafers.” I guess it’s weird to turn the turning leaves into news, although in my former neck of the woods, it was a way to extend the tourist season and scrape a few more bucks out of them. Since it’s such a depressed area, I just rooted for them: come on, tourists, take a look at that hillside!
Ø, I have gone up close but I’ll do so again today.
If you are used to seeing the trees turn to very bright colours in the fall, then the eagerness of people from other areas to see them might seem exaggerated, but the sight of a whole forest looking like it is painted red, when you have been used to an almost uniform brown occasionally relived with yellow, is quite amazing. But the desire to see the fall display is no more bizarre than the desire to see the first daffodils in the spring, the apple blossoms of the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia or the cherry blossoms in Tokyo or Washington DC. These and other ephemeral natural pageants which occur every year but not exactly on the same day seem to especially attract the kind of tourist who travels by tour bus – most of these people are not affluent and cannot afford to use more expensive modes of transporation, or to travel to more spectacular places such as the Eiffel Tower, the Iguazu Falls or the Gand Canyon, and they must be content with a much more modest excursion. It is very important then for them to be able to arrive in time to see the natural show, not too early or too late. Currently added to the precarity is the fact that the intensity of the red in the leaves is a function of the trees’ reaction to the cold, and as climate is warming, the spectacular fall colours are moving North, leaving some of the formerly red trees to turn brown.
I think I should have used “precariousness” instead of “precarity”.
Never mind. I wish I could write so well, m-l. I didn’t know about the apple blossoms in the Annapolis Valley, that would be something to look forward to.
[…] Ø’s advice I walked down through the meadow by the lake […]
Thanks for the compliment! The Annapolis Valley (“The Valley”) is the only really fertile spot of any extent in Nova Scotia, which is otherwise a granite rock with a thin layer of topsoil. Many people flock to the area for the “Apple Blossom Festival” in the spring.
I immediately regretted my essentially curmudgeonly comment about leaves and tourism. In fact, I regretted it in advance, with the result that I toned it down before posting. This left me with the unpleasant feeling of having brought something toxic into the world, but with none of the pleasure of having really purged my ill-humor.
m-l, nothing could have cured this malaise better than your characteristically reasonable and kindhearted response.
Tourists deserve lots of hostility (except when I’m one of them, obviously).
Annapolis looks strangely part European, part North American. Very nice.
Many of the small coastal towns and villages look very nice, and the landscape is varied but on a small scale, with small fields, meadows, orchards and woods, none of them huge and overwhelming. The area was settled a long time ago (first by the Acadians, who came from France in the 17th century, then by English, Scots and Germans after the expulsion of the Acadians in the next century), so the inhabitants had time to develop their own styles of living and building, before modernism struck.
Actually, many Acadians were able to come back later, though not to the same places as before, since their properties had been given to English, etc settlers, so they had to become fishermen instead of farmers. Most of them are concentrated on “The French Shore”, in the Western part of the province. Driving around Nova Scotia, you can tell at a glance whether a village you see in the distance is English or French-speaking: if you see three or four little churches, it is an English village with different Protestant denominations; the French villages have a single enormous Catholic church, much larger than the houses.
I didn’t know that the Acadians were expelled. How different is the French in the francophone villages to your own French? Is it similar to the French they speak in Québec?