Winds in the Mountains

THERE ARE WINDS IN THE MOUNTAINS NOW, COLDER AND MORE brisk than those of summer, telling of the change in seasons. Autumn is here. The clouds above the mountain are in a greater hurry, and from the north comes the bite of frost.

Lifeless trunks of trees, their dead roots held by the strong earth, bend in the wind and rheumatic old branches creak and groan as if crying aloud for liniment. On one of the slopes of the San Francisco Peaks, a forest fire long ago laid waste to all living things and these tree trunks are evidence of the bitter drama of fire and wind and weather. The years brought rains and the snows, erasing the charred black marks left by the flames. Now the trees are white in the sunlight on the mountainside and the scorched grass is green again. Now the winds in the mountains in autumn rattle the dried branches like skeletons in a closet.

The winds of autumn are sweeping across Northern Arizona, announcing the departure of summer. Along Highway 66 between Ash Fork and Kingman, the winds cross the plateau piling the tumbleweeds against the drift fences. Two Navajo ponies near Wetherill's store at Kayenta stand facing away from the wind, their manes and tails pointing the direction of the wind itself.
 

Autumn Clothes the High Country appeared in the October 1957 issue of Arizona Highways. “Scene taken near the San Francisco Peaks in the early part of October in 1954,” wrote our editor. “Venturing off the main roads, one will sometimes find a spot where light and subject matter meets with the approval of a nature photographer.” 

There is the annual transformation of the green of the aspen, the sycamore, and the cottonwood to gold and all shades of brown. You have seen it ever so many times before, as you have seen Autumn before, but each year you are so struck by Autumn's touch you feel you have seen it just now for the first time.

The leaves change in color and one by one fall to the ground so the ground is covered with the gold and brown leaves and the trees become bare. But winter does not come until the leaves are all gone from the trees.

The brown leaves on the ground have lost their softness and are dry and crisp, skippety-hopping along the ground hurried by the wind. Where they lay deep on the ground, they crunch under your feet and have a sound all their own before the rake.

Autumn is the wind in the mountains and the gold and brown leaves and the smell of the earth in the mornings and the harvest.

Autumn is grand.