Pretending for a second that there isn’t a scientific explanation for leaves turning the colors they do, why did the power in the sky decide to make them yellow, orange, red, and pink? And all at the same time? Why can’t leaves just fall at once and spare us the incremental misery? No changing colors, just green leaves falling over the course of a day or two. As it is, it’s impossible to keep your eyes off the mountains, or on the road, knowing that even the slightest breeze up there is spinning millions of gold aspen coins quietly to the forest floor. You know the mountains are changing right before your eyes, but you don’t really know it until it’s over.

Then there’s male brown trout, more yellow, orange, and red but in much higher intensity than throughout the rest of the year. As with bull elk, autumn is the time when his drive for romantic consummation runs a little hotter than the instinct to not get killed. He’s blinded by lust – temporarily stupid, in other words – charging competing suitors then hurrying back to his sweetheart’s side over and over. You catch a big male brown trout during or right after spawning and he hardly fights. That’s because he’s tired from the mating ritual. It’s not a bad idea to resist the urge to target brown trout around spawning season, this year especially with the drought we’ve had and the consequent importance of regenerating the fish stocks we may have lost.

I love the sounds of fall, the special treat of sitting above the Valles Caldera and hearing elk bugles rising out of the fog-covered valley floor. On walks through the woods, I swear I can tell the difference between the wind making leaves brush against each other and the hollower sound of air rushing through the naked limbs of November. You’re out in the yard and just like that the sound of incongruous croaking seeps into your consciousness. Looking up its geese or cranes in an arrow headed south.

I want to say that people are better in the fall, which could either mean that others are actually more pleasant to be around or that we ourselves are, which is essentially the same thing. By the end of October, we’ve received a constant message that things are wrapping up for the year: aspens falling, that once a year blue of the sky, putting on that hoody that’s been in the closet all summer. Balloon Fiesta. Cambalache. Halloween. Cutting wood and the cows coming home. Fall reminds us that life is an ongoing transition, a series of inevitabilities. Ever so gently, it forces us to accept.

Thus ends yet another failure to capture in writing the frustrating beauty of autumn. How fitting. Just like the season, writing about it is about grasping at what remains and knowing that even if I could catch it, I could never hold on. It’s not about holding on, but letting go.