Anna Traube/foliage

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Sometimes I feel like I’m cheated out of the Fall season. Like a ballerina, she flutters onstage and whirls off so quickly, before I even get to watch her dance. School starts, and before I know it, it’s twenty below zero, the grass is frozen solid, and my favorite tree is naked, shivering in the cold. It happens every year, sometime mid-November. I turn around and she is gone. She escapes, stealing all the color with her, and leaving her evil winter twin to take the reign.

This year, I beat her to it. I met her onstage, and instead of staying in my seat, I swirled and twirled out of my chair and got right on stage to waltz with her. I promenaded along her rainbow foliage, pausing every so often to get snapshot of her beauty. Her radiant leaves seemed to spell R-O-Y-G-B-I-V across the azure sky.

Fall danced so brilliantly for me this year. I guess that was good timing on my part that I caught her midstep. In my Fall photo shoot, I captured the natural decor lining the streets of New York. Perspective changes from photo to photo: in some, I zoom in on her vivid hues; in others I give her room to breathe (and dance).  I try out all the different sections of the theater, trying to get different view of the dancer on the stage. I watched the Fall dancer from different angles.

Each screen shot in my collection accents the season’s colors. But in all of them, the color shimmies around the streets of my neighborhood, skipping around the bends, and twirling down the hills. Fire-engine reds and sun-kissed yellows and burnt auburns and gleaming greens make up the rainbow of Fall. This year I did better than a box seat;  I got up and danced in the aisles.