The Story

I made this photograph while wandering along Lake Creek outside of Twin Lakes, Colorado. It was fall, but the aspens were past their peak color transition. The leaves had started to let go. They fell from the trees, landed on the forest floor, and eventually found their way into the creek. Some floated downstream. Some caught on rocks. Some gathered in quiet pockets of water. That is what caught my attention. At first, an aspen leaf seems like an aspen leaf. Same general shape. Same familiar autumn story. But when you look closer, each one is different. As fall comes, days shorten and temperatures cool. The tree slows and then stops producing chlorophyll, shuts down the flow of fluids to the leaves, and forms a layer of cork cells at the stem. Eventually, the leaf breaks away. The greens, yellows, oranges, reds, purples, and browns each reveal something about where that leaf was in the process of dying and returning to the landscape. Each color reveals different stages of change and decay. Some were still holding onto green. Some had turned yellow. Others had darkened into orange, red, purple, and brown. They were all going through the same process, but none of them were going through it in exactly the same way, at exactly the same pace. I was thinking about how beautiful it is that no two things let go the same way. These leaves had fallen from the same forest and entered the same river, but each carried its own color, its own history, its own process of decay.

Cruelty Free

It has survived

Anything here

Silicone Free

Free returns

It has survived