Fall in a time of drought, relieved.

The day the calendar announced fall’s arrival – a pounding rain doused the North Shore. The darkened, cloud-menacing sky that had hovered over the northland for two days sent waters gushing onto the land as if from gutters on a high building. The accompanying wind hurled waves against Lake Superior’s shoreline in frothing banks that looked like scalloped lace. 

Watching the storm on September 21, I wondered if the long lines of pilgrims heading north in their campers and trailers and pick-ups seeking fall color would be disappointed, knowing how strong wind and rain can shake even the most tenacious leaves from trees.

I remembered the year I'd enthused over the color of our North Shore fall and told my hubby to hurry home from South America where he was working before it disappeared. As he flew northward, a storm like the one I was watching took all the leaves from the trees. "Where's all the color?" he'd sighed when he arrived -- it was our first fall in a home on Lake Superior's shoreline and he'd missed it. So, though I'd seen glorious color on a hike I'd taken before the storm, I didn't tell him about it when he called from Los Angeles that night. Instead I kept my fingers crossed and suggested we hike first thing the morning he arrived back home.

 Bill walks ahead of me up the trail. The sun has just risen.

 We began hiking early that morning and had just started to climb the Oberg Loop when we met an older man coming down the mountain. 

“I’ve been coming up for 30 years and this is the prettiest I’ve ever seen it,” he told us. And when we got to the top we knew he was right. We stopped at every overlook to marvel at rich tapestry of color spread below us. Saturday became the most memorable fall color hike we'd taken in the 10 years we've lived here. When we descended Oberg, passing noisy groups of excited viewers climbing upward, we were feeling high. 

Unwilling to leave the woods, Bill and I decided to hike the trail at the foot of the mountain that led to the ski hill in Lutsen. It was a blessed decision. Brooks leapt and gurgled with joy at such fullness after a summer of drought and sunlight cut through the darkened woods lighting the maples above us.

When we reached the Rollin’s Creek campsite, we stopped to eat a small lunch of cheese and apples and nuts in the presence of a grove of cedars--nine of them clustered like Stonehenge with boughs and needles so perfectly shaped they might have been sculpted by a landscape artist.

One ancient cedar was so huge it seemed a woodland divinity. We sat beneath its towering height and listened to the quiet winds that shuddered through the woods, allowed the sunlight to bathe our faces, lay on our backs to look upwards through its branches, unable to see all the way to the top.  

The Minneapolis Star Tribune named Beryl as a "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors." Her book The Scent of God  was a “Notable” Book Sense selection for April 2006.

This article has been adapted from a different version published in my "Putting Down Roots" column in the Cook County News Herald, Friday, September 27, 2007