Autumn’s annual color extravaganza always takes me by surprise.

Not that I haven’t been expecting it, mind you. Nor have I slacked off in my habitual outdoor observations and failed to note the ongoing headway.

Nope. I’ve been looking, watching, and paying attention.

Besides, autumn’s seasonal spectacular isn’t fulfilled in secret, but rather in bold and blatant exposure. Change that happens smack out in the open where anyone can keep tabs on its progress.

Fall’s color makeover hereabouts begins in September—or in the case of sumac and woodbine, possibly as early as late August.

Week by week, first one tree then another one will catch the mood and begin a metamorphos. Up the hill, along the fenceline, beside the creek—the cool fires of autumn spread steadily, tree by tree, leaf by leaf.

Greens start to fade as chlorophyll drains away. The landscape begins looking anemic-yellow, with age splotches of rusty brown; here and there a few hints of brighter hues sometimes appear. The leaf’s true and underlying color—present but masked and hidden all along underneath the chlorophyll mask—gradually starts to show.

Then, quite abruptly, the majority of the plant’s leaves kick into gear and quickly take on their mind-boggling patchwork of spectacular hues!

Crimson reds! Fiery oranges! Vivid yellows! Plus shades of mahogany, russet, tan bronze, gold, lemon, saffron, pink, purple, maroon, burgundy, amethyst, and ruby—along with a hundred other colors which have no name but are just as lovely and distinctive.

Yet the paradox is that while this transformation escalates within my unobstructed view week after week, the whole dazzling miracle of autumn’s colorful peak still somehow manages to startle me by sneaking in, seemingly overnight. It’s as if every bush and tree, along every riparian corridor or farmland woodlot, city park or suburban yard, fencerow or roadway border, had received and reacted to the same secret message, and abruptly displayed their true colors to me.

One day I’ll be driving along a country byway, my mind elsewhere—distracted by worries, schemes, obligations, anticipations, or perhaps the weighty consideration of what I planned on eating for an upcoming meal. Caught up in my own little world and semi-oblivious to my surroundings…until I casually glance out the side window.

It’s like a giant peacock had slyly waddled up close to the blacktop and suddenly spread its technicolor tailfeathers!

Shazam! I’m immediately and unexpectedly dazzled! Taken aback and astonished once again by nature’s overpowering beauty!

I feel like a dull-witted possum who’s just shuffled into the middle of the Interstate and looked up to gape at a speeding eighteen-wheeler heading straight my way. I’m dumbfounded by this autumnal landscape. It’s so forceful, so sensational, and so suddenly here and in my face, that I often have to pull over on the side of the road and gawk!

How can something I’ve been waiting and watching for again sneak up on me? After all, the older I get, the more autumns I’ve witnessed, and the more familiar their comings ought to be.

A mind-boggling display of the northern lights is a rarity here in Ohio. And a total eclipse of the sun is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

But autumn’s spectacular leaf color happens every year. The turning season eventually triggers the leaves into a color frenzy. And given the amount of water that’s run under my life’s bridge at this point, I certainly shouldn’t be shocked when that repeat performance materializes.

Apparently some of us old dogs either can’t learn certain tricks…or we’re too senile to remember we know them. At least until the day a gaudy, breathtaking landscape beyond the windshield overpowers our subconscious and literally wrenches us into the here and now—a seasonal color club that whacks us on the head.

That hasn’t happened to me yet this fall—and begs the big question, when will it occur? Or will it?

“Is fall’s color ever gonna come?” my neighbor recently asked, voicing what I suspect many of us are wondering.

Over the years I’ve realized the color peak at any given spot is surprisingly predictable, and takes place on practically the same date year after year, regardless of weather vagaries. Years of nature journals seem to confirm this suspicion.

Hereabouts, I consider that peak will occur within a day or two either way of October 22.

Of course, this is a personal opinion. What stage of autumn’s foliage development constitutes its “color peak” is a subjective call—and you’re welcome to disagree.

More worrisome to me—and pertinent to my neighbor’s concerns—is the nagging fear that this time around, the hopes of a spectacular autumn color show is not going to happen.

It has, indeed, been a strange year, weather-wise. Some might say it’s downright weird.

We’ve had a lot of rain, and, paradoxically, many days of drought. Heat and cold when and where along the seasonal cycle that such weather was not normally expected.

More than once I’ve gotten the feeling something had gone haywire with our weather and seasons. Or possibly the entire strange and unsettling milieu of this past year has just afflicted me with uncharacteristic paranoia.

I dunno. All I can say is that we seem to be running out of time. If fall is going to wow us with a dazzling leaf color show, it needs to get down to business in a hurry!

Frankly, I want to see the landscape in full neon hues—reds and yellows and oranges; I need to be bowled over, gobsmacked, stopped in my tracks by the sheer wonderment and dazzle of those bright, colorful leaves!

Bring on the show! I need that fix…I need autumn’s annual surprise!

Reach Jim McGuire at [email protected].