When the Goldenrods Appear

There comes a morning when the mountains seem changed, though nothing has moved.

The summer still holds the valleys beneath a warm September sun, and the crickets continue their music among the fields. Yet along the country roads, where the wild growth has risen through the season, the goldenrods have appeared.

Golden yellow.

That is how autumn first reveals itself to me.

They stand beneath the hills in great, scattered gatherings, their slender stems crowned with yellow, catching the last richness of summer before the year begins its descent toward October. There is something almost mysterious in their arrival, as though the mountains have been keeping a secret and have finally decided to reveal it.

I have always loved this first sign of fall.

Before the maples begin their crimson turning, before the hills take on the deeper colors of October, the goldenrods come forward and declare that the season has changed.

Their yellow seems almost supernatural beneath the September sun.

I look at them and think of all the autumns that have come before this one. Each year they return, rising along the same roads and hillsides, carrying the same beautiful message. Summer has reached its final chapter. The year is turning.

There is beauty in that turning.

The mountains seem to know it.

And that is why I never see the goldenrods as the ending of summer. I see them as the beginning of something wonderful, the first golden yellow doorway into autumn, when the mountains begin their transformation and the year prepares to become beautiful in an entirely different way.