Winter Wonderland, Grand Canyon

OPPOSITE PAGE "FOREST OF GOLD" BY HUBERT A. LOWMAN. Jack Frost

Had used only one color-goldwhen he painted this aspen grove at the Arizona Snow Bowl in the San Francisco Peaks area above Flagstaff. Weak sunlight from a partially overcast sky and large shadow areas in the picture would normally have necessitated a great increase in exposure time, but the light color of leaves, trunks and grasses countered this. Exposure was 1/10 second at F11 on Ektachrome, no filter, using 5% Zeiss Tessar lens and Brand 17 4x5 view camera with tripod.

THIS PAGE "Twilight in the Forest" By Esther Henderson

Seasons change. There come the first chilling breezes from the north and even the calendar cannot gainsay the fact that autumn is about to move in, changing the world from green to one of gold and brown and brighter colors. One night a frost envelops the world of green leaves, and the frost comes like a silent stranger, a powerful stranger, waving a wand of magic. The touch of that wand means the end is near for the green leaf on the tree.

Almost overnight the green disappears from the leaves. They take on the colors of autumn-brown, gold, dust, red-depending on the species of the trees.

With life gone, the leaves cannot resist the pull of the harsher winds of autumn. When the brown leaves start falling, autumn possesses the land. The leaves form a brown carpet on the earth, a carpet that is crunchy and crackles underfoot. But even in their transition from the living to the dead the leaves add color and beauty to the scene. Theirs is the high note of loveliness, to the lovely season that is autumn.

So autumn's life, too, is spent. With winter come the snows. A blanket of white blankets a blanket of brown. The leaves disintegrate and return again to the soil from which they sprang, making the soil richer by their life and death.

When spring returns, new and greener leaves will come again from the richer soil, promising another green world of summer. The seasons come and they go. The leaves, thanks to a beneficent Providence, go on forever . . . R.C.