Gold in Them Thar Hills - and a Giveaway!

 by Davalynn Spencer

The Gold Rush isn’t over in Colorado. It resurfaces every year in late September through mid-October as high-country aspen and lower country cottonwoods exchange their summer greens for glimmering gold and fiery reds.

Colorado's aspen groves line highways and mingle
with evergreen forests. - Author's photo

“There’s gold in them thar hills,” people have been known to say, and they flock to the Rocky Mountains like migrating geese for a gander at the scenery.

This coming weekend officially introduces fall to our calendars. Even so, it’s often hard to predict exactly when peak foliage viewing times will be. According to arborists, scientists, and others in the know, catching the colors in their prime is all about chlorophyll and temperatures. And elevation.

Author's photo of Rocky Mountain color in an early fall snowstorm.

The higher the elevation, the earlier autumn swishes her lovely skirts along the Rocky Mountains. A general rule of thumb for viewing fall foliage in colorful Colorado calls for higher-elevation stands and those located farther north to flash sooner than lower, southerly sites.

Colorado’s famous aspen trees and their poorer cousin, the cottonwood (both are in the poplar family), change colors for the same reason other deciduous trees do: photosynthesis decreases as daylight hours lessen in the fall.

Have you noticed in early September that daylight seems to have cut loose and run? That’s because we lose an hour of daylight during the month of August as the earth tilts toward autumn. And we are not the only living beings that feel it.

Technically, the leaves of these trees don’t change from greens to golds – the color range is there all along, like stars in the sky that we can’t see during the day. Yellows, oranges, and reds are merely masked by the green hues until chlorophyll production fades.

Author's photo

The United States National Arboretum says a wet growing season followed by a drier, clear-sky autumn and cool nights generate the brightest colors. In addition, unhealthy trees are less vibrant than healthy trees, much like other growing things, including humans.

Colorado is not the only state to harbor aspen trees, and they thrive in higher, colder regions with cool summers. The trees are often called quaking aspens due to the longer, flatter petiole, or leaf stem, that allows the leaves to flutter in the slightest breeze.

Aspen leaves "quake" due to their longer leaf stem. -Author's photo.

Aspens grow in colonies connected via underground root systems. The oldest known colony is found in the Fishlake National Forest of Utah, where it covers roughly 106 acres.

Comment to be entered in a drawing: I’d love to hear about a trip you took to see the colors – even if it was just around the block. Those who comment below will be entered in a random drawing for an e-copy of my latest release, Mail-order Misfire, Book 2 of the Thanksgiving Books & Blessings Collection.

Wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters, Davalynn Spencer writes cowboy romance. She is an ECPA and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author and winner of the Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Inspirational Western Fiction. And she’s fairly certain that her previous career as a rodeo journalist and crime-beat reporter prepared her for life in Colorado wrangling Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley. Connect with her via her website at www.davalynnspencer.com.