Autumn Creeps Up On Caribou Ranch Open Space

Autumn Color, #2. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

It is still over a week until autumn officially arrives, but the colors are beginning to seep in to the grasses, shrubs and trees at Caribou Ranch just the same. Change–the only constant. The slow and sometimes subtle (sometimes not!) transition is almost more engagingly beautiful than that much heralded time when the colors reach their maximum, probably some two weeks hence.

Caribou Ranch? Yes, we couldn’t stay away from that enchanted place, so we returned yesterday for a walk through the forests and fields, through the mossy-humid, cool, perfume that serves as air in these parts, through the occasional chilly rain shower and the distant roar-rumble of thunder. We returned just a handful of days after leaving the place after my week as a Boulder County artist-in-residence at the red cabin.

Here are some of the images from that seven-kilometer walk…

As you hike in, here is the first solid line o’ sight on the DeLonde Homestead’s red barn–Boulder County’s artist-in-residence cabin. There is a nice sitting bench along the trail here, so park the fanny horizontal, relax, and enjoy the view and the distant calls of the bugling elk:

Red Barn View. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

Chlorophyll production is starting to scale back as the nights grow longer and cooler:

Autumn Color, #3. Caribou Ranch open Space, Colorado, 2016

María Rosa Fusté, composes an image. Note the aspen, scarred from multiple elk encounters:

The Photographer in Red. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

Even the waves of grasses and willows near the swampy areas were exploding with a wonderful palette of autumn color:

Autumn Grasses, #2. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

In many areas, the transition to fall does not seem to occur in any systematic way. It is often haphazard, with the rhyme and reason only apparent to Mother Nature: