"Sugar maple and sassafras leaves flirt with red."

Nothing supernatural here; rather, this column is a paen to the natural as we observe the transition from Summer's warmth and light to Winter's cold and ice:

Everywhere you look - if you look - the signs of the new season are upon us. Turtles no longer sunbathe. Wood frogs and spring peepers have fallen silent, a long time ago. Soon the last bullfrogs and green frogs slip into protective pond mud, where their suburban ponds remain, without asphalt death caps from new parking lots. Now and then a treefrog announces thunderstorms from its arboreal perch. In a few weeks they burrow under logs and freeze, stop breathing, yet live. Crickets have a few more weeks to serenade the moon.

It's a prose poem as much as an essay... and quite worth reading in full.