Sometimes 'camouflaged as summer'

In New Hampshire's White Mountains.Photo by Someone35

In New Hampshire's White Mountains.

Photo by Someone35

"A New England fall has the sort of reality summer will never have. Summer is an idyll; lush, throbbing, lazy, it delivers promises and fantasies spun in February. Fall puts an end to the dreaming; But while it is an end, it is also a beginning. Things start up once more. You regather and regroup.

"As for Nature in fall, she's in a tricky mood. The fields pulsate yet with the sound of cricket and cicada. The trees are round and full as they were in mid-July; the ponds lie there misty, warm, seductive. One day camouflaged as summer, fall can easily toss of this disguise and appear as a prophet: cold, wet, angry. ''

-- By the novelist Anne Bernays, from her introduction to the "Fall'' chapter of New England: The Four Seasons, by Arthur Griffin.