a.k.a. V.J.

Fall 2024 has been a rough-weather period for large swaths of the United States. At this writing, parts of Florida sit devastated in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton and significant portions of the Southeast are still reeling from Hurricane Helene. Meanwhile, my little corner of upstate New York is playing the part of a meteorological contrarian and treating us to the warmest and mildest autumn I can remember.

September was downright hot. It featured a string of 80-degree days that would have been the envy of most of the Julys in my lifetime. October has cooled off a bit, but it’s still unseasonably warm. As a result, our fall foliage is behind its usual schedule. Here we sit a couple weeks from Halloween, and most of the tress are still green.

These weather patterns are probably pretty dire indicators of climate change, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying it. Today I took a drive through part of the Finger Lakes region, stopping in the oh-so-tony village of Skaneateles and the decidedly un-tony city of Auburn. Along the way, I passed by apple orchards, pumpkin patches, and fields filled with brown cornstalks. I was ticking all the autumnal cliches off a mental checklist as I went. The whole time, the landscape was bathed in warm, golden sunlight instead of darkened by the gray overcast skies one expects this time of year in Central New York.

Later in the day, Jen and I drove out to Sterling Nature Center in Cayuga County, which is where all the photos in this post were taken. Despite visiting in late afternoon and being on the shores of Lake Ontario (often a chilly proposition, even in the middle of summer) it was barely cool enough to justify our light jackets.

All that said, the signs of fall were there to see if one looked in the right places: the red creeping vines growing on tree trunks, the crunchy leaf-litter beneath our feet, and the occasional tree that decided to change colors ahead of its compatriots.

But those were the outliers. Our Sterling nature hike was a trek through a verdant landscape in this greenest of Octobers.