Late summer party crashers are common in New Hampshire – but these are not people. They’re leaves.

It might still be muggy and hot outside but look up to the highest tips of the maples, and there you will find hints of autumn. Those oranges and reds beginning to paint scattered treetops are here to remind you that sweater season is knocking on the door.

For me, the first sighting of color sometimes elicited surprise – especially when it seemed unusually early. (“For Pete’s sake, it’s only August 19th!”) But there really is nothing better than autumn in New England, so how could those early signs be anything but welcome?

The window from late September into the first two weeks of October in Northern New England is the highlight of the entire year: the undisputed main attraction and pièce de resistance. Leaf peepers descend on the region from all over the world to witness the spectacle. For photographers, it’s like the World Series and the Super Bowl and Fourth of July fireworks and whatever-else-you-can-think-of all tied up into one big gift package adorned with fancy wrapping paper. Only better.

As a native Midwesterner, where most of the abundant, stately oaks greet October in an understated, unpretentious manner, I wasn't prepared for my first autumn in New Hampshire. The show was so over the top, so unbelievably flamboyant, so indescribably spectacular, it took my breath away.

It still does.

The one person whose description of autumn in the Granite State knocks it out of the park is Donald Hall. His name might ring a bell; I’ve mentioned him previously. He was the Poet Laureate of New Hampshire from 1984-1989 before becoming the 14th Poet Laureate of the United States. In the 1970s, Hall and his wife moved to his grandparents’ former home in Wilmot, where they remained for the rest of their lives. He wrote a book about life in that area, entitled Seasons at Eagle Pond. For a taste of rural New Hampshire, I highly recommend it.

Hall perfectly characterizes foliage season. These few excerpts paint a lovely picture of this October masterpiece:

“For amorists of October, the red branch is the sign we seek...

…From the red branch on the green tree, Fall enlarges to become the red tree on the green slope, where one maple of a hundred chooses to charge first into the breach.

...Deep Autumn is a beautiful Godzilla, wildest of wild beasts. Abrupt shreds and edges of New Hampshire turn fauve, while most of the northern hemisphere remains vague, impressionist, and pretty. Here we become Van Gogh for the yellow of sunflowers, Gauguin for the skin of oak leaves rich and sensuous, Hans Hofmann for the loaded, overloaded, dripping explosions or onslaughts of RED.

...If it were a cuisine, New Hampshire Fall would combine curry powder, maple syrup, garlic, tutti-frutti, basil, scallions, chocolate black as the human heart, chile relleno, fresh pineapple, and Coleman's mustard - chopped and hashed together, mayhap, in the Cuisinart of the middle distance."

While all of New England is painted in ostentatious, extravagant autumnal color, for me there is nothing so beautiful as New Hampshire – and the White Mountains in particular.

It seems only fitting that when I relocated from California to the Granite State, I arrived in October. Since then, I’ve never grown tired of seeing all of that red: crimson, scarlet, burgundy, auburn, carmine.

Nothing against the other spectacular fiery hues, but those reds…

This is how I came to revere autumn. I must also credit New Hampshire for turning me into a serious photographer. I’d owned an SLR for quite a while by the time I relocated to the Northeast, and often carried it with me, but the switch flipped almost as soon as I showed up. From then on, the landscape and I were inseparable.

Every autumn, whether I’m working in New England or elsewhere, I try to find different ways to tell the story of this amazing spectacle and convey what it means to me. My feelings for and about the autumnal landscape, particularly in my beloved New Hampshire, are sometimes overwhelming – in the very best way – and difficult to put into words. Photographs are, I think, a far more effective means of communication.

The calendar has turned; September has begun. Those tiptop leaves are brushed with color. The curtain on the greatest show on earth will be going up before you know it.

Enjoy the performance!

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