Alpine Loop

It's officially fall and fall beats all. Here in Utah, anyways. And in Missouri. I'm not sure about fall in miserable places with coastlines aka tropical prisons with mangos instead of pumpkins and speedos instead of cardigans. No other season boasts a taste of everything—an annual sampler—for those who can't commit to just one flavor. Why, from my deck in fall I can see snow on Timp, punches of pomegranate in Alpine, swaths of yellow in the hollow, my own freshly cut grass not ready to give up the green ghost, and flamingo-pink dianthus blossoms swarming with bees.

FALL IS EXCESS. Gather the harvest and bring in the sheaves! Mason jars were created for fall. My favorite part of the Little House on the Prarie books was when the family prepared to hibernate by busting out the fall frontier to-do lists—burying root vegetables in the cellar, hanging onions and herbs up high, and Laura getting the roasted pig tail when they were finished. Fall also means not running the AC or the furnace, so even the checking account has a little extra tumbling out of its cornucopia.

FALL IS RESOURCEFUL. As nature's bounteous, but discounted, last lap, fall is simply summer on clearance. Stock up because when it’s gone, it’s gone for good. It is the seasonal cider press that squeezes every last drop of life, color, and flavor from what once thrived.

FALL IS INVIGORATING. My friend Dave and I have a little competition for who can feel fall first. I’m not sure how it started but we are generally trying to prove who relishes a cable knit hug or the nostalgia of microscope-burnt leaves the most. Last year he won with, “I knew it was here a week ago because, as usual, my productivity and mental acuity is off the charts.” Fall not only sprinkles a magical salt to get the creative juices flowing, it supplies the energy necessary to execute visions.

FALL IS EXHAUSTING. I’ve been running full speed ahead since spring’s first pea tendril uncoiled and summer evaporated faster than a poolside footprint. I want to yell “Timber!” and collapse horizontally but fall warns, “Faster! Winter’s a-comin’!” with demanding swirls of crisp air. I paint the exterior doors, roast squash, can applesauce, plant mums, and wash all the bedding before noon on Tuesday. Maybe I’ll rest when the pass closes.

FALL IS FATTENING. I stop swimming in chlorine and start swimming in cream. Don’t throw me a lifesaver until I’m bubbling on the edges and golden brown! Is there a healthy fall recipe? Maybe if I put dark chocolate chips in the pumpkin cookies?

FALL IS A DECRESCENDO. Sunflowers hunch and their hardened stalks are perforated by downy woodpeckers—the tiniest jackhammers around. It is darker earlier and the good Daylight Savings happens. I love me an extra hour.

FALL IS ITS OWN HALLMARK MOVIE. It is every good thing written into a sweet-as-a-caramel-apple, so-perfect-it-must-be-fake script. It stars cranberries, acorns, cinnamon, gourds, chestnuts, hayrides, festivals, and football.

FALL IS FAST. Part of me yearns to curl up in my leather reading chair—the one in the sunny corner by the open window screen—with a lightweight throw to catch a few winks but I fear I’d wake up like Rip Van Winkle and see snow.

FALL IS A LONG TRANSITION. Landing safely between Verdant and Dormant it manages migration, conversion, bundling, storage, and depletion, and then slowly, with faded copper keys, locks down the season for good.

I must be in the fall season of my life; the bipolar conundrum where I’m winding up and winding down in a single rotation of time’s crank. The days stretch long, like a piece of pulled taffy, and hardly last, like a just-lit wick being snuffed by a draft.

Joanne Ramos said, "I've begun to sense that, maybe, it's in the loops of life—it's deepening circles, and not the forward thrust of 'progress'—that fulfillment lies."

Year after year there is no loop I look more forward to living than fall. 

Photo quote by Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

“Fall is hot and cold at the same time.” -Archer, age 6

The Alpine Loop is a 20-mile scenic drive through rugged mountain canyons near my home. You enter at American Fork Canyon and exit at Provo Canyon but not before passing caves, rivers, camping sites with awesome names like "Salamander Flats", Sundance, and dueling evergreen and aspen groves. Stunning all year but serious heart-eyes bonkers gorgeousness kill me dead scenery in the fall.