Chasing Autumn: How Nostalgia and Climate Change Led Me on a Trip up the Mountain

I begged my partner to ferry me on the back of a motorcycle up the rutted, unpaved eastern side of the Sandia Mountains. I was searching for something.

It was mid-October and still hot in Albuquerque, especially in the valley. The AC was on and we wore shorts while our local stores stocked plastic pumpkins and Halloween decorations. An unusual spate of rain gave the parched weeds false hope, and they rioted green in our yard. Autumn was not arriving, despite all the faithfully conducted rituals.

The chile had been roasted, ristras strung, the hay baled and put up in barns, the crows returned, Balloon Fiesta chaos packed in, and tarantulas scuttled across the road searching for mates. 

Every morning the sun rose a little later over the top of the Sandias, and every evening the sun painted them adobe a little earlier. Slowly the sun traced its way south along the eastern ridge of the Sandia mountains. 

Every marker of the changing season had arrived except the one I lusted after - the changing leaves. 

The Sandia Mountains, however, create a microclimate that is cooler and wetter than the rift valley in which Albuquerque nestles. Up that mountain was the best bet I was going to have at finding changing leaves. 

As we approached the base of the mountain,  I could see the aspens amongst the ridges, strips of gold gilding the rain-dampened granite. 

I am not sure why I needed this affirmation of the changing season. Perhaps the monotony of six months of hot days had finally broken me. Perhaps it was the distant echo of my ancestors who did not hail from places that were hot half the year. 

For the first time in my life, I needed confirmation that summer was ending - proof that the inexorable cycle of birth, maturity, death, dormancy, and rebirth was still spinning.

Increasingly, it feels like climate change is stealing from me the climactic touchpoints that mark the passing of time - snow in winter, spring rainshowers, hot-but-bearble summers, brilliant autumns. 

We know that climate change is altering the seasons. We know that in 75 years summer will last six months and winter just a short two - a division already the reality for New Mexicans and others in the Southwest. 

As I get older, I have noticed I am existing in a state of nostalgia for a time and place that doesn’t exist. That doesn’t just mean the places where I grew up - increasingly that means the climate I grew up in - when rains came without prayer, when winter meant snow, when gardens didn’t shrivel.

My neighbors reminisce when the housing development across the street was an alfalfa field. Soon am I going to be reminiscing to the younger generations about the era when fall meant changing leaves, cool days, and rainy autumnal evenings? Will I continue to wonder if the leaves were brighter only in my memory? 

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The eyes in the aspens oversaw my quest as we climbed the back of the mountain. Over the rutted and rocky road, revving the motorcycle through puddles and over buried boulders.

Every twist in the switchbacked road, every couple hundred feet of elevation gain the temperature fell, and my hopes grew for the aureate foliage that would finally tell me that autumn had arrived. 

Finally we hit the paved road that takes you just shy of the crest. We pulled over on a pull off. With the motor off, the silence at the top of the mountain was deafening. Just the sound of the leaves through the trees.

At the crest the colors weren’t as vibrant as I had hoped. The pale yellow of the leaves was certainly more change than we had in the valley, and the air was crisp, but it wasn’t the vibrant gold I had believed I would find up there. 

Fall foliage is determined by the temperature, day length, and rainfall. In particular, warmer October temperatures cause the leaves to change later, and less rainfall leaves to duller leaf colors. 

New Mexico has been in a drought for the last several years. The monsoon rains have been unpredictable, arriving late and ending early, and never dropping enough rain. This is a direct impact of global climate change. 

It’s not just fall foliage that we stand to lose. 

Globally, spring arrives two weeks sooner, and autumn two weeks later, now that temperatures are rising across the board. This affects everything downstream. 

The Rio Grande serves as a migration route, rest stop, and final destination for several kinds of migratory birds. Sandhill cranes arrive, hummingbirds depart, but will they know the right timing for their journey if the weather shifts? Will the tarantula we saw crossing the road find love before desiccation overtakes him? Flowering plants open their blooms earlier in the spring and are already gone to seed by the time pollinators awaken. 

If the occurrence of one event in the chain is thrown off, the rest of the beings along the chain suffer. The connection between the weather and all life is now more tenuous than ever.

With the rapidly deteriorating state of the planet, every day spent on earth should feel like a gift, not a comparator. The autumns of the  past are gone, never to return. While that is worth mourning, I have to live in the now, with the full knowledge that this moment is a gift that will never return again.