Fall Colors Quickly Changing

A beautiful autumn morning on Big Snowbird Creek in North
Carolina's Graham County.

Having spent most of last week in the mountains of western North Carolina, I was struck by how much the colors changed in the short time that I was there.

Nathaniel and I fished on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and Friday's photos are noticably more colorful than the others. We were admittedly in a different stream, a little farther up the mountain. Still, the entire landscape change from green with hints of yellow and red to one with more warm colors than cool ones.

The change was even more notable at Fontana Village, where we stayed, because we looked at the same mountainsides every day and could see the color creeping down the mountain and filling the forest a little more each day, and the drive home was so much more colorful than the drive there.

Of course the fuller color didn't quite follow us home. Gray skies, a fair number of leaves on the ground and hints of color do create an autumn-like appearance when I look out the window, but we're still two or three weeks from the nicest fall color in North Georgia.