When the Trees Don’t Quit, and the Seasons Keep Teaching

 A walk through fall colors reminds us of resilience, the wisdom of trees and their networks, and what is still possible.

I headed out to Golden Gate Canyon State Park this week to catch some of the local Colorado fall colors. The trail was paved in yellow, a soft carpet of fallen leaves that guided us forward. Gold and green tugged at each other on the branches overhead, as if summer and fall were negotiating their handoff. Every few steps, a squirrel or a bird cut through the silence with its own small announcement, while the air carried that unmistakable smell of autumn: earthy, sharp, and clean. A light drizzle brushed our cheeks, but the clouds gave way now and then, letting sun fall across the aspens just long enough to make them shimmer.

Trail walk video in Golden Gate Canyon Park, Colorado

As we climbed, the forest opened into a miniature mosaic of color. Patches of yellow stitched into the green, hints of the season’s slow turning. I remembered why fall feels like the only change I welcome without resistance. Out here, I wasn’t tethered to screens or headlines or the constant thrum of urgency. Out here, the shift felt natural, patient, inevitable. Change can be gentle, even when it’s unstoppable.

Watching the leaves shift reminded me how fall works its magic. As the days shorten, the green in the leaves breaks down, and the other colors underneath – yellow, oranges, and reds – finally show through. Aspens in the Rockies turn their signature gold, maples in New England light up with fiery reds and oranges, dogwoods in the South bring deep purples, and oaks across the Midwest shift into a deep red-burgundy color. What looks like a final burst of beauty is really just the trees preparing for winter, a seasonal rhythm that repeats year after year.

Aspens themselves are remarkable in more ways than their autumnal display. Clonal by nature, these groves share massive underground root networks, making them extraordinarily resilient. In fact, the largest known aspen root system, called the Pando Aspen Clone, or just Pando, in Utah’s Fishlake National Forest, covers a little over 100 acres and consists of over 40,000 individual stems (which to us look like individual trees). Weighing in at an estimated 13 million pounds, Pando is one of the largest single living organisms on Earth! Entire hillsides can sprout from the same roots, turning a forest into one interconnected lifeform. Beyond their scale, aspens also provide food and shelter for countless animals – like moose, elk, deer, migratory birds, hare, woodpeckers, and other cavity nesters – and help anchor fragile mountain soils. Even when individual trees (stems) fall, the grove persists, adapting and regenerating.

Like so many other native plant and animal species in the forest, aspen groves depend upon patches of high-intensity fire to effectively reproduce and proliferate. After a high-intensity fire patch occurs, aspens will typically dominate that part of the forest landscape for decades. Swift to regenerate from the resilient root systems, new stems can sprout just two weeks after a fire which kills all the existing above ground aspen trees (see photo, 3 months post-fire). Aspen sprouts grow swiftly into trees, with sprouts growing as much as 5 feet per year (see video 3.5 years after the Lake fire killed all above ground aspen stems and pine trees in this grove), which is possible in part because the tissue under their thin bark can photosynthesize sunlight into growth even after they drop their leaves in the fall. This swift growth is essential because their time in the sun, especially post-fire, is limited, as naturally regenerating conifers will eventually grow taller, shading out the aspen stems which will begin to slowly die back and recede as the conifer forest matures…until the next high-intensity fire starts the cycle of root sprouting all over again.

Video 3.5 years after Lake Fire, aspen sprouting

Aspen and other deciduous trees, like willow, cottonwood, and poplar, have more to offer than shade and color; they’ve been natural medicines, too. Their bark contains salicin, the natural precursor to aspirin, used by humans and animals alike for centuries to treat pain and inflammation. Nature itself provides remedies, quietly, reliably, without fanfare or human direction.

By the time we reached the higher trails of Golden Gate Canyon State Park, the sun had begun its slow descent, casting a warm light across the mosaic of yellows and greens. The trees are insouciant in the face of timetables, deadlines, and the struggles that occupy human minds. Even as human plans falter or bureaucracy stalls, the aspens don’t wait for permission to turn gold or to rise from fire. They just do. They persist. They adapt. And that persistence is the quiet lesson they leave for anyone who takes the time to notice.

Keep moving with the turning. Don’t let the weight of the world keep you from seeing its beauty.

Guided by the gold of the aspens,
Bekah