The Fall Conundrum

Heather wrote a post about how right now in Arizona it was 94 degrees and she was so happy because it was the perfect weather! I remember those days. See, when I was growing up I always loved my birthday. Even though my birthday was in late September, it was always warm enough to go to the lake. It really was the perfect weather.

The fact that we went to the lake even in the third week in September and it was wonderfully warm meant to me that it was summer. So I always thought that September was summer. It wasn't until I was in college that I heard someone refer to September as a Autumn month. And my mind rejected it for a while, because September was warm, and summer was warm, so September was summer!! It's clearly an A=B, B=C so A=C situation.

Since moving to Utah, I have come to realize that there ARE 4 seasons. In AZ you just have 2 seasons: 1)Hot and 2)Getting ready to get hot. And that brings me to my next story. An embarrassing little tidbit from my freshman year of college.

So like I said, AZ has no seasons. So things are either brown or light green. The green comes from the eucalyptus plants. What do you expect? It's a desert people!! Deserts are brown!

But then I moved to Eureka. Eureka is the opposite of Arizona. But I've already written a post about Eureka. Actually, Lisa said that it reminded her of Forks, WA from Twilight when I was describing it. THAT IS MY TOWN!!! When I started reading that book, I immediately thought of my town because that's just what it's like. It's green, covered with forests, there is a Native American Tribe close by. I'm not kidding. If there wasn't a Forks in real life, I would've put down money that they were talking about my home town.

But back to my point. Eureka is green all the time, every day, every moment of every day. All the trees stay green year long, and it's beautiful. I know I've talked about how the trees on the mountains go right into the ocean. It's great for someone like me who loves the color green.

So my freshman year of college I was a young and naive little girl of 17. I loved being on my own, and I loved being at school. I had never lived somewhere where it snowed on a regular basis, so I was looking forward to experiencing that.

One day I was walking home from my Friday anatomy lab and I was admiring the mountains and how tall they are and how they were so close. But then there was something wrong. I didn't know what was going on, but I knew just who to ask.

I walked in and found the person I was looking for:

"Catherine, What is going on up on the mountains?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, there is something weird up there. Like some little red dots or something. What's happening?"
. . .Pause. . .
[cue condescending tone] "Uh, those are the TREES, they are changing COLORS."

I felt like an idiot, and her tone let me know that I should feel exactly this way. It's not my fault that I've never seen the trees change color!! I mean, I've always heard of that happening *in theory* but I had never experienced it for myself. And having never seen it before, I didn't know that the trees turned at different times. I thought they all simultaneously turned red together. I think that's what threw me off more than anything: They were just dots of red among the green. It's not what I was expecting.

So if you are from my home town, I want to just clue you in on a little bit of information: The trees in Utah change colors pretty drastically, and they don't change all at the same time. Oh, and the people that grow up in Utah will make fun of you for not knowing this.

P.S. When my brother Jake moved to Utah out here 1 year ago we were driving around with him and I told that story. He wasn't paying attention to my story and only caught the moment when I said, "and then I was walking home and I saw something on the mountain. And I noticed there was something there." And RIGHT THEN he looked up to the mountain and said, "Hey, what's up there on the mountain? What's that red stuff?" HA HA HA!!! See, I'm not the only one!! Eureka will do that to you. You think all trees are supposed to be green always and you will question yellow and red trees forever.