That last post of mine had me surfing through my personal photo library to come up with some great examples of the sorts of colorful foliage Maine can often get. While there are a ton of variables around the timing and the vibrance of the display, for the most part, the shift happens in mid-to-late September and lasts nearly until Halloween. (At least, that was the case where I lived in Southern Maine — the timing does vary based on how far north you go — or how far south; we once took a ride up into the White Mountains of New Hampshire in late October and found that the trees there had just barely begun to display their fall wares.)
Depending on how the season has gone, when I return for my annual trip to see my family, we’ll often try to take a day and drive through some of our favorite parts of the state and see if we can locate any patches of color. It can often be hit or miss — probably more often, miss — but when we hit a spot where trees are putting on one heck of a show, we’ll pull over long enough to memorialize the moment. Often one massive burst of color is what we’ll get — but it will be so wonderfully amazing, it will have made the effort worth it. Of course, I don’t entirely deny that driving around like that is also another way of scouting for locations for my books — or that it’s a not so subtle way to spend time with loved ones that I miss dearly the other fifty-odd weeks I’m back in Arizona.
The ocean shows an entirely different palette when fall rushes up the coast; the sky always feels more dramatic, a little bit grayer perhaps against the frothy dark blue of the ocean. It’s nature’s herald of the rapidly approaching winter, and the storms that will churn the water enough to lay thick swaths of seaweed along the empty beaches. Walking along the sand just ahead of such a storm can be a rather invigorating experience, with the smell of salt in the air and the wind whipping around you.
I do miss much of that, which is one of the reasons various pieces of it percolate into my novels. Where Vasily tends to live through the sorts of weather we have here in the Southwest/West Coast, allowing Sean to experience the seasons allows me to live through them once more, however vicariously it might be.