The Startling Yellow

Imagine the dark, drippy green cloud-festooned beauty of the fir forest of the western Cascades. Then the highway rounds a bend and, like beams of sunlight bursting through cloud, the brilliant yellow alders stand like torches on the mountainside. My heart lifts like a kite. The lemon-yellow larches are fairy flames, so delicate and symetrical is the tracery of their limbs.  And on the eastern side of the mountains the aspen blaze with the most astonishing yellow. I remember first seeing the aspens in their fall clothing on the Colorado Plateau almost thirty years ago - it is an unforgettable color.