Fall's Arrival

Actually, I think fall doesn't officially arrive until tomorrow -- but then again, it almost already *is* tomorrow.:)

I've gone past this hillside probably hundreds of times. And it always looks different (and almost always beautiful -- except in summer, when it's a pretty uniform green). But I have never seen so much color on it as I did today -- pretty spectacular. And by the way, most of that color is undergrowth, not trees.

And I had a revelation today. When I was in the Canadian Rockies last month, it kept feeling to me as if I was at 10,000 ft. But in another way, I knew I wasn't -- because I was much stronger than I normally am at that altitude. Today I hiked in the Sandias, near the crest (much higher than where I took this shot), which is at 10,000 ft. And I realized I could almost have been in the Canadian Rockies!!! A lot of the vegetation was the same, and it felt the same (cool and humid) -- and it even rained a bit, to remind me, I guess, of what I was missing.

I realized -- where I was in the Sandias (which are considered the southernmost part of the US Rockies) -- is in the same life zones as the Canadian Rockies -- "Mixed Conifer/Canadian" and "Spruce-Fir/Hudsonian." It's been pounded into my dull brain for years that the Sandias represent six life zones -- but I really understood it today for the first time. I think that, when I was in the Canadian Rockies, I was subconsciously aware that I had experienced those life zones before and knew that I'd been really high all the other times I'd been there.

Pretty amazing!