INVITATION TO AUTUMN

By Raymond Carlson Photograph by Josef Muench The long, lazy days of summer drift by and the weeks trail after them. Then one day summer is gone and it is autumn. You will find autumn in the mountains along the roads through the aspen. The leaves, a few weeks ago so green and shiny and sparkling in the sunlight, have turned to yellow, gold, red and brown, for the touch of autumn is a magic touch and autumn is in the air. The wind tugs at the leaves. They fall to the ground to dance before the wind and they are crisp and crunchy underfoot. Soon all the leaves will be gone from the aspen and the branches, so white and delicate, will hum a different tune to the music of the wind.

All the flowers are gone now. The gay insects, whose voices were raised to summer's song, are gone too. Summer is over and it is time to rest. The gayer colors have faded from earth's covering; another, and warmer, carpet has been spread, a thick brown carpet thick enough and warm enough to keep out the cold of winter.

The days of autumn are shorter, and they hurry along as if they had more important business elsewhere. There is frost on the ground in the morning and the air has a bite and a nip. Night falls swiftly and there is not that lingering twilight that marks the days of summer. The stars have a steely look, as if they, too, felt the season's change.

Yet not even spring is more beautiful in the mountains than autumn. The colors of the leaves turning before autumn's touch are extravagantly rich, a profusion of gold coin, turning to more solemn tones, flung over the land. Against the color of the turning leaves, the green of the pine and spruce stand out and even the blue of the sky takes on a depth and character it does not possess at any other time during the year.

Autumn brings a hush to the mountain world, as if all the world were tensed and waiting. The gossipy, chattering birds have taken their gossip and chatter to other places. What you hear is the sound of the crispy, brown leaves dancing before the wind.