It’s nearly the end of October, and all I needed was a fleece vest to walk the quarter-mile down to my mailbox. I glanced at the birdhouse on the deck and decided the aspen gold hadn’t been brighter any Fall in my ten years here. Going on down the steps to the drive that winds its way 
downhill confirmed this. The colors were positively glowing. With little mail to carry, I decided to make my way along MT Highway 200 and check out the Clark F
ork Valley colors. My house receded, but the colors didn’t. The aspen, possibly a few poplars, and evergreens reached to catch sunlight. The winner was clearly the cottonwood to the west of my property. It shone like a prima dona on a stage full of starlets. Its gold-bronze set off the hanging meadow above my place,
leaving it like a white-crowned ancient one resting above all the fluttering leaves. I remember hiking up that meadow one green Spring, heart pounding with each step, and a return trip down when too much momentum had me wondering if I’d stop gracefully or in a heap against a tree at the bottom. My hiking partner, thankfully, caught me. In spite of the angle that propelled us both downward, we had kept stopping to enjoy the view of Clark Fork River. 
I dedided this valley is gorgeous in every season. Turning attention to the river, I crossed the highway for a closer picture. Looking both ways–twice–I hurried across the new double yellow lines. Between me and the view lay the route of eighteen-wheelers, logging trucks, SUVs, Subarus, Suburbans, old clunkers, and occasional bikers. All but the bikers were going well over the 65 mile/hour speed limit. Thank goodness the mountain sheep hadn’t been seen down there for awhile.
Someone had tossed a plastic bag in the grass. I picked it up and started filling it with juice cans, pop bottles, Bud cans, breakfast bar wrappers, faded celephane, a washcloth, and broken glass. No more plastic was handy, so I left the rest of the debris in the grass, except for a hunk of heavy chain
that will go to the scrap recycle. At first, I was angry; after all, I’d picked up four miles of the Perma Curves with Women’s Club Highway Clean Up and added another couple of miles for the Methodists’ Clean Up Stretch last week. Women’s Club made a game of it–prizes for the most unique finds picked up by plastic-gloved hands. As I recall, one rubber child-sized shoe won over a dime, an unopened energy bar, a diaper, a car tag, a potholder, and a faded Horton Hears a Who. We’d filled, on average, a giant garbage bag-per-mile on each side along the roadway near the Plains’ Weigh Station too–just outside the city limits. Driving along, it doesn’t seem like much to toss your coffee cup or beer can (some even crush them!) out of a car window into the grass and weeds alongside the road. If it’s over a guard rail, you never see it again–until you have to retrieve it and the rest of the trash folks pitched. How can we be so inconsiderate of others and nature? I don’t understand it. I began to hurry homeward, itching to wash my hands. (I’ve heard horror stories about what truckers toss out their windows.)
The breeze fluttered my driveway tree leaves, and I lifted my 
eyes again to the hill colors. Maybe tomorrow, weather cooperating, I’ll take my own garbage bag and do a half-mile each way on my own. The neighbors will probably not notice, but I’ll feel better and have another day in Fall’s glorious colors. Come join me!
One more freeze and windstorm and all this will be gone for 2011, maybe before Halloween. Here’s my costume: “The Good Witch” feels about right today, living above this clutter that hides under Montana’s glorious color.
