Opinion: Nature dazzles in autumn

I'm a city kid, who can often be unmoved by nature. But I am dazzled by autumn as it unfolds.

I'm enthralled by how all the reds, tans, yellows and golds that paint the leaves that still stick to the branches and stir in the winds can become their own busy cityscape.

I'm entertained by the magic show. See these green leaves, right? Then, abracadabra, in front of our very eyes — they all take on different colors!

My wife and I spent a couple of days this week in Bend, Ore. There were maple trees along a river that looked almost like geysers, gushing up with red and gold leaves. Brown leaves spilled over the ground and crunched under our feet with each step.

We walked through parks that seemed to have become covered with sumptuous Persian carpets of leaves, winding with swirls of brown, burgundy, scarlet, and sun-bright yellow.

Dogs romped through the jumbles and clumps of those leaves, and shook them off their noses. Children scampered into the piles, knee-high, dancing and laughing, sounding beautiful, sharp, silvery bells of giggles against all the crinkling and the crunching.

Gusts of wind would whirl through the leaves there, and seemed to sculpt them into waves of red, orange, and yellow that rolled across the green of the park. At one point, a couple of leaves plonked me in the face. As a city kid, my instinct was to say, "What just hit me? Call a lawyer!" But of course, it was truly an act of nature.

There is wonder and also wistfulness in autumn's annual spectacle. The curtain of summer heat lifts, singing leaves with shades of orange, gold, and yellow. But the leaves that burn bright will soon fall away. The birds that perched and sang from along the branches for spring and summer start to pack to fly off for warmer climes. It is part of the special show of autumn that reminds us how colder days are coming, and the darkness of longer nights.

We have ways to be warm and happy in the winter ahead, too. But autumn's fleeting, fragile days of crisp mornings and bursting colors can be moments that remind us to open our eyes to the world, and to cherish and care for it while we can.