Twenty-five years ago my family and I moved here from the East Coast, northern New England to be exact, and the Boston area specifically, although before living in Boston we lived in Maine. And after we came here about ten, fifteen years after we arrived I decided to volunteer here at the Arboretum. And in volunteering of course, one of the things that I find myself doing is being exposed to all of the wonders that the Arboretum presents, and in particular, the coloration during the fall. And that brought me to a realization of the difference between the colors of the trees here in the Midwest, actually in all of the United States, and the coloration, at least in that part of the United States that we call northern New England.
There are only two places in the world where there the coloration of trees in the fall is as bright and diverse and as brilliant: one of them is in the northern reaches of Japan, and the other is northern New England. The reason for that very simply is the climate, and particularly the amount of rain that comes in during the year. And so being here at the Arboretum every year I am brought to remind myself or to be remembered by those wonderful wonderful colors that we had in Maine and in New Hampshire and in Vermont and even though the colors here in the Midwest are very nice I still have a place in my heart for the colors in northern New England.
