Happy October, friends!
Though I no longer live in New England, I become nostalgic as summer turns to autumn, watching the leaves turn gold, russet, and red, the scent of chimney smoke, the starkness of the quarter moon, and the brilliance of the stars in the clear, dark skies.
And, I suppose this is what those visitors (leaf peepers!) experience when they flock to the highways and back roads of New England.
Growing up in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, I didn’t think much about the leaf-peepers coming into the city. I lived here, went to school, church, and played with friends. The changing leaves was nothing new. Yet, leaf-peeping was BIG business for the merchants, and continues to this day. (The photo on left is similar to the view from my former bedroom window.)
In Japan, leaf-peeping is known as momiji-gari, often translated as “hunting red leaves.” In Finland, ruska describes the colorful leaves themselves.
While the United States boasts breathtaking displays everywhere from Texas to Minnesota, it’s hard to deny that the Northeast is queen of the season—a position the region has held for at least a century and a half. Lifelong Massachusetts resident Henry David Thoreau once called October “the month of painted leaves.”
Emily Dickinson, another 19th-century Massachusetts poet, also distinguished the maple in the last stanza of her poem “Autumn”:
“The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.”
In October 1863, a New York correspondent for New Orleans’s Times-Picayune wrote that “When American poets first began to talk about the ‘gorgeousness’ of October” in the Northeast, “they were heartily laughed at abroad and at the South, and their enthusiasm was looked upon as extravagant.” But “that was years ago,” the writer said, and travelers had since realized that the area’s annual “color show” truly was spectacular.
As the century progressed, that color show became a selling point for autumnal excursions. An 1877 advertisement for a resort in the Catskills (just over the state lines of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont), highlighted “magnificent mountains, beautiful fall foliage and fine partridge shooting.” A September 1884 briefing in Connecticut’s Hartford Courant mentioned the popularity of taking the 8:40 a.m. train from Hartford to the Hudson River, having lunch, and coming right home.
Though the bulk of this activity was centered in the Northeast, the Wes and Midwest weren’t oblivious to their own botanical marvels. The Cincinnati Enquirer encouraged people on one October Sunday in 1887 to visit the city’s zoo, “now radiant in all the glory of fall foliage,” and in September 1906, Washington’s Spokane Chronicle included a notice about a $2 round-trip steamer ride down the Saint Joe River, with its “superb fall tinted foliage and perfect river reflections.”
Tourism likewise ramped up in Vermont at this time, largely to natural spas, with fall foliage providing an added attraction. By the 1930s and 1940s, New England’s fall tourism industry was reportedly in full swing, with a Vermont newspaper describing the six-state region as a “mecca” for those seeking colorful foliage. Then, in the mid-1960s, the Bennington Banner, another Vermont newspaper, published the first-known reference to “leaf peepers,” an apparent spinoff of “leaf peekers” that has remained in the popular lexicon ever since.
Though New England is the sweet spot for viewing the golds, reds, and burgundy leaves, vivid foliage displays can be seen across much of the United States, from lemon-colored aspens in the Rocky Mountains to cinnamon-brown bald cypresses in the Southeast.
So, the next time you find yourself gazing at a particularly stunning maple or aspen leaf, take a moment to appreciate not just the leaves, but the fact that you’re participating in a long-standing tradition. You’re not just a casual observer; you’re a leaf peeper, part of a proud, slightly quirky lineage that stretches back centuries.
**********
For a chance to win an e-book edition of “Caroline’s Challenge”, tell us if you have ever gone “leaf peeping” near your home or taken a trip to witness the annual spectacle of leaves changing colors.
There’s always one risk in life worth taking.
Caroline Stoddard clung to Sister Benedict’s words like a lifeline as the train took her across the country from Boston to Pine Ridge, Colorado. After learning the orphanage was closing and she’d be without a roof over her head and a teaching position, she couldn’t have been more surprised when the Prioress referred her to Millie Crenshaw, owner of the Westward Home and Hearts Matrimonial Agency.
But life had another surprise in store for Caroline when she stepped off the train in Pine Ridge, Colorado. Instead of the new start she expected with James Murdock, her intended groom, he is nowhere to be found. With only a few coins to her name and no reason to return to Boston, she’s determined to make the best of it in this rugged land.
As the deputy sheriff in Pine Ridge, Knox Manning is haunted by a robbery gone wrong, making him question his ability to protect the town, and a stranded woman at the train depot with nowhere to go is the last thing he needs. But walking away isn’t in his nature. The badge he wears is both an anchor and a burden, one that caused him to sacrifice the one thing he always wanted—a chance for a home and a family.
Just as they begin to see each other in ways neither expected, and Knox dares to dream about a future with Caroline, the town of Pine Ridge is threatened by the same outlaws he’d been tracking for two years.
When Caroline is abducted, Knox realizes the gang had given him something worth fighting for—worth dying for, if necessary.
But more importantly, worth living for.
Welcome to my hometown! But to be perfectly honest with you, I haven’t lived there for more than fifty years…and I’ve never really given much thought to the history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts until the Fillies suggested doing a blog about our hometown towns.
