Carnett: Ah, the spectacle of fall — elsewhere, of course

It was a glorious early September morning.

My wife, Hedy, and I were driving through the wooded coastal foothills of Maine.

As we rounded a curve, we saw ahead a green hill soaring 500 feet into an azure sky. The thousands of deciduous trees occupying its flanks still had a full complement of green leaves.

Except one.

A lone alder — halfway up the slope — obviously hadn’t received Mother Nature’s memo: “Hold your green until you see the whites of their eyes; or, at least until Sept. 15.” Every other tree on the hillside was of an emerald hue, but Mr. Showoff was neon yellow, and beginning a dramatic transition into Caltrans orange. Later in the fall he’d turn red and then purple.

Hold your horses, mate! The flamboyant alder stood out like a nudist at a pancake breakfast.

Actually, Hedy and I were grateful. We’d be leaving New England in a few days, and would miss the turning of the leaves. That’s how we were able to secure our bargain travel rates.

But, thanks to one showoff tree, we were granted a sneak preview of autumn in Bar Harbor. We could close our eyes and replicate thousands of colorful alders in our mind’s eye and — voila! — we had the fall colors of New England.

Have you ever experienced the spectacular Adirondacks in New York at fall foliage time, or traversed the Blueridge Parkway through Virginia and North Carolina? There are scads of sublime East Coast autumn vistas.

Kim Philby was a British MI6 counterintelligence agent who turned Soviet spy during the Cold War. Though a thoroughly despicable fellow, he was known to rhapsodize ad nauseam about autumn on America’s Eastern Seaboard. “(It’s) one of the few glories of America,” he observed, “which Americans have never exaggerated because exaggeration is impossible.”

Here, here!

As a native Southern Californian, I’ve come to regret the fact that our dirty, oily, smelly, non-native eucalyptus doesn’t change color. A dowdy species, the repulsive Eucalyptus globulus is olive drab no matter the season –- and can’t possibly get uglier even with a hideous case of leaf mange. The only thing it manages to shed is its bark, in huge sheets.

I was raised to believe that fall in California is a 45-day addendum to summer and a 45-day run-up to a balmy Mele Kalikimaka. But autumn has become my favorite season of the year, and no place does fall better than the East Coast.

The reason for New England’s foliage phantasmagoria is the region’s preponderance of a relative few species of deciduous trees that all turn at the same time. Couple that with warm days and cool –- but not freezing -– nights and you have Yankee Splendor. A freeze at the wrong moment, however, can smother a promising New England autumn in its cradle.

New England’s aforementioned colors are the best of the best. In that unique niche environment the fall foliage cycle commences in August. Shortening daylight hours trigger the process. We humans don’t actually take notice until mid-September or so -– and later than that as one travels south.

The leaf-changing process moves from north to south, like an amber continental wave.

We were in southeastern Alaska in mid-September this year and the leaves had already begun changing. They were yellow, on their way to orange.

In northern New England, leaves generally start in mid-September. In southern New England and along the area’s coastline, they commence a few days later. In the Mid-Atlantic States — from Maryland south to North Carolina, and west to Tennessee — the foliage generally begins its metamorphosis in early October.

Fiery colors are at their grandest in early to mid-November at my daughter’s home in eastern North Carolina –- long after leaves of New England have been swept up and burned.

I love what English poet John Dunne said: “No spring nor summer’s beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one Autumnal face.”

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.