Serene and Obscene

First of all, it’s foal-ee-idge, not foil-idge.

How in the world that bastardization of the word foliage, which I had never heard once until I came to the Midwest, where it is probably the preferred, and absurd, way to pronounce something that represents one of the lovely, and kind of odd, pleasures of life came to be used I will never understand.. Look at the damn word. That emotional salvo in this convoluted paragraph is the jumping off point for an exploration of fall experiences.

Viewing foliage is a beautiful thing. Having been raised in New England, it is as intrinsic to recreation as going to the beach, or skiing. Mature trees are so abundant that the technicolor show that is put on each fall is astounding to the point that it actually became an industry. People routinely head to the northeast (and not just there, I get it) by the tens of thousands and are taken on guided tours, or explore on their own, the rolling hills festooned with reds, yellows, oranges and purples. There is actually a spot in northwest Massachusetts, where an area of high ground has small towers built so that people can go up and gaze, and take pictures from a spot where you can see Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York with the mere turn of the head..

This completely naturally created phenomenon now has hundreds of motel and cabin properties around it. I know, I stayed there with my girlfriend, and you can be reminded of my profession, and my interests, by the fact that I remember exactly the date, October 9th, 1985. How specifically is it so easy to recall, or at least retrieve? Because that was the evening of Game 2 of the ALCS, which the Blue Jays won over the Royals in ten innings. I watched it in a bar in the village that lies below the observation towers, and the place was mobbed with tourists.

When you think about it, foliage is kind of a strange phenomenon. It is so lovely, yet what we are viewing are dying leaves. But they die slowly and beautifully. To our great benefit, while thriving green leaves have a beauty of their own, the ones that are in transition from full flower to being on the ground soon, turn delightful, and varied, shades. When viewed in a panoramic vista, the results can be breathtaking. Heck, even an individual tree in your front yard can bring some real joy.

I was thinking of this while driving yesterday, and looking out at the emerging foliage. In western Johnson County, while it’s no Vermont, there is some outstanding viewing. Here in this part of the Midwest we do have a great combination of a fair amount of trees, but not the envelope of them that I grew up with, and enough sky space that we can have foliage AND sunsets. Where I grew up in suburban Boston, I never saw the sunset. There was no real horizon between the rolling geography and the omnipresent trees. There are many, many roads in this area where you barely can even look up and see the sky.

So we do have some nice foliage to view in our travels around here, but the juxtaposition of experiences in our autumnal world was also in evidence. I was taking in the sights while driving on the highway, and, I don’t know if this is a Covid-19, or hideous 2020 development, but does it seem to you that everyone has gone mad on the byways? There is a classic George Carlin bit that sums up the feeling that we get on the road. “Anyone who is driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster is a maniac”. Well, it seems to me that the maniacs are running rampant.

The serenity of viewing lovely foliage now often seems to be interrupted with some “maniac” weaving through lanes at about 95 miles an hour. Even ordinary highway driving seems to have been put on steroids. I like to drive relatively fast, and I am very busy, often hurrying to my next destination. But the standard left lane ten miles over the speed limit, maybe even a bit more, gets you a rear-view mirror full of grillwork now. Okay, I’m happy to move over to the next lane, but these days it often is at the peril of being run down by someone else who is roaring down the second lane in, unhappy with 82 miles an hour. And somehow it never seems that you see that guy pulled over five miles down the road.

My cruise control on my car isn’t working right now, and I miss it. It was my tool for making sure I didn’t blithely all of a sudden be going 87 and risking the ticket that the guy going 92 somehow never gets. But with the state of the flow of traffic right now, I am just merrily moving along, not passing anyone, and look down and realize I am flat flying.

Maybe it would be a good idea if we all just slowed down a bit, figuratively, to smell the roses, literally, to take in the sights of the fall in a more relaxed way. Given our times, perhaps finding some back roads might the the nice solution to the freneticism that is 2020. The colors of fall can provide a respite from the complicated times that we live in.

And a brief escape from the idiots and the maniacs.