Unless you are a botanist or a scientist, you probably do not spend much time thinking about leaves. Most people do not. They are just there, and then they are not, and the year moves on.
A while back I overheard a conversation on a local radio station where the hosts were genuinely surprised to learn why leaves change color in the fall. They had never heard the explanation before and seemed almost embarrassed by it. What surprised me was that I had known this since I was a kid. Middle school science class, maybe earlier. I assumed it was common knowledge.
A few days later I saw someone post the same information on social media. Same reaction in the comments. Dozens of people genuinely shocked to learn something I had taken for granted for years. It made me wonder how many other things I assume everyone knows that are actually not as common as I think, and vice versa.
Why Leaves Change Color in the Fall
The short version: as days get shorter and temperatures drop, trees begin pulling nutrients back out of their leaves in preparation for winter. Part of that process is the breakdown of chlorophyll, the pigment that gives leaves their green color. As the chlorophyll breaks down and disappears, the other pigments that were always present in the leaf but masked by all that green finally get to show themselves. The oranges, yellows, and reds were there the whole time. Fall just gives them room to be seen.
There is something worth sitting with in that. The color was always there. The conditions just had to change for it to become visible.
Coming Back to the Midwest After Years Out West
I had been watching the leaves at my new place for a few weeks. They had started changing early, even back in late August when I was visiting my mom. Then, almost overnight, they turned and fell in one big gesture, as if the trees had decided collectively that fall was over and winter was not waiting around. A weekend visit to my mom a little later and nearly every tree was bare. The bright color replaced by a drab brown covering the ground and the treeline.
But here is the thing I noticed that I had not noticed before. Once the leaves are gone, you can suddenly see everything that was hidden. Barns tucked back in fields. Houses sitting back in the trees. Old structures you had no idea were there. The landscape opens up in a completely different way once the leaves stop doing their job of filling in all the space.
Living in the Southwest for several years meant I missed this entirely. No dramatic leaf change, no bare treeline revealing what had been hiding behind the green all summer. Coming back to the Midwest and experiencing it again after a long absence made me see it differently than I ever had growing up here. Familiarity has a way of making things invisible. Distance gives them back.
What We Stop Noticing
I think about this sometimes when I am out on a trail or driving through somewhere I have been a hundred times before. How much am I not seeing because I already think I know what is there? The radio hosts who had never learned why leaves change color were not incurious people. They had just never had a reason to look at something they saw every single year and ask why it worked the way it did.
The outdoors has a way of rewarding the second look. The thing you walk past on the trail every time and then one day actually stop to look at. The familiar road that you have driven a hundred times that suddenly shows you something new when the leaves come down and the view opens up. Paying attention is free. It just takes slowing down long enough to do it.
If you want more of this kind of writing, the Adventures and Stories sections have more trip narratives and reflections from the road. The newsletter is where a lot of the shorter observations and finds end up that never quite make it to a full post. Subscribe on Substack if you want to follow along.
