Fall in Texas is nothing like the season Utah celebrates. Before retiring and going on the road, I enjoyed the cacophony of colors that painted this Rocky Mountain state’s hillsides and forests for 25 years. The change between summer and winter there blared out like a cannon being shot off on the Fourth of July.
Texas’ fall plays a pale game of hide and seek. The lush leaves of summer seem to simply turn brown overnight, and then fall to the ground when the next wind whistles through their branches. Thankfully, a few leaves choose instead to fight back against winter’s call with one last show of fire.
I’ve been watching two such patches for the past week on my daily walk from my camp site here at Cedar Hill State Park on a loop that takes me down Joe Pool Lake and back. One is a sprinkling of orange against a background of tree trunks and light green foliage; the other a scarlet-leaning-toward-maroon patch that sits in front of a stand of evergreens.
They halt me in my tracks every time I pass by. Because such fall color is rarer here in Texas, when I do see it, I always appreciate it. While I still miss the vibrancy of Utah’s fall, I’ve discovered you can find beauty anywhere you look, even if it’s nothing more than a litter of horse apples lying on the ground after falling from a Bodark tree.
And that’s not a sight I ever saw in Utah.
Horse apples that fell from a Bodark tree here at Cedar Hill State Park
Pat Bean's blog 
Leave a comment