In returning to Virginia’s Potomac Valley, we were looking forward to a return to four distinct seasons–including a clearly observable autumn–with the turning of green leaves to brilliant reds, purples, oranges, and yellows as temps plummeted toward freezing with an icy winter ahead.  That’s why I’m glorying in views like the ones (above and below) just beyond our door along Lake Cameron. This blog entry may bore you with lots of such views. But I can’t help snapping them!

Effects of Climate Change: “Let’s enjoy the beauty while we still can.”

I first called this entry “Relearning Autumn,” since we were returning to the colder, rainier East with its exquisitely colorful fall. However, according to many studies summarized in National Geographic this month, the gradual, steady warming of the planet is delaying the turning of colors of foliage, and even more alarming, disrupting the natural cycle of trees’ changing of chemical production that brings about the changes we glory in with our eyes every fall. Warming means that fall happens later and spring happens sooner, so the growth and rejuvenation cycle that trees depend on over the winter just grows shorter. So “Learning the New Autumn” seems a better title. I guess our mantra should be, “Let’s enjoy it while we still can.” 

Is there autumn in the Sacramento Valley?

The very different Sacramento Valley’s virtually year-round warmth, with perhaps a few January days just below 32 F, means a preponderance of trees whose leaves never fall. And, oh yes, full on spring comes in February, which always fully delighted this camera-happy gardener.

Now that’s not to say that Californians don’t enjoy a sort of fall in the Sac Valley.  Just last December, 2021, this blog catalogued the annual schedule of leaf falls among our fruit and flowering trees in an entry titled The Holiday Gift of Fallen Leaves.  The entry describes the ongoing power of fallen leaves in the garden’s nutrition and growth. Two of the trees noted in the entry were the wisteria and the cherry plum, whose leaves painted the ground in December:

“Up the Hill” from the Sacramento Valley

For more of a traditional October autumn familiar to Easterners, you need to go “up the hill” from the Sac Valley toward the Sierra Nevada and into El Dorado County. Just north of the town of Placerville lie the orchards, farms, and vineyards of Apple Hill, named for the annual apple harvest festival in September and October. In our California years, we made many visits to Apple Hill and its many close-together and beautifully-organized farms. 

A particularly memorable trip was in late September 2019, when three of our grandkids, their parents, and one of our daughters and her husband joined us there.

“Up the hill” in Virginia: Skyline Drive

From Skyline Drive, we look east across the Blue Ridge Mountains toward Washington, DC.

Here in Northern Virginia, the most iconic destination for those wanting to bask in autumn colors is Shenandoah National Park, where the Skyline Drive, built in the 1930s, winds its way through the Blue Ridge Mountains.  As we strive to rediscover the region, we drove the 70 miles to the park this week and spent the day in near-freezing temps to marvel at the views, do a bit of hiking, and enjoy a good meal at the Skyland Lodge, which has been serving travelers since the 1890s. Skyline Drive provides numerous “overlooks”  (California calls its highway viewing spots “vista points”), at which drivers stop to be dazzled by the autumn scenery.

Seeing the Shenandoah Valley

Westward from Skyline Drive is the famous Shenandoah Valley, which spreads 35 miles wide from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Allegheny Mountains. In the photo above, the Alleghenies are the two most distant light blue ridges. The closest blue ridge is Massanutten Mountain, which separates the two branches (or “forks”) of the Shenandoah River. For this blog, the Shenandoah River is significant because it is the largest tributary of the Potomac River. So everything that you see in the photo, including the mountain ranges, is part of the Potomac Valley watershed.

Geologists estimate that these mountains formed between 1.1 billion and 250 million years ago, making them far older than the much taller Rocky and Sierra chains in the West. The Shenandoah River has been working for hundreds of millions of years to form the broad valley of low hills and flatland that its two forks flow through, while wind and water over those same eons have leveled the mountains down to the 2000-3500 feet typical in Virginia’s Blue Ridge. Even the tops of these mountains are covered in the deciduous trees that give us the colors that proclaim autumn in Virginia each October. 

The October 2022 Gallery

Most of these photos come from our tours around the small lake next to which we now live. Every time we walk the path that surrounds the lake, we make fresh encounters with plants and animals. Earlier this month, we experienced three days of rain that came from Hurricane Ian, which devastated much of Florida, then moved up the Atlantic coast and also affected areas inland. Though most of what you’ll see in these photos is typical of this time of year in Virginia, Ian not only raised our lake’s level several inches, but on two days dramatically influenced the flow of water into the lake, as you’ll see in the video that concludes the gallery.

Storm waters from Ian rush into our little lake.

Happy Halloween and all good wishes for November adventures!