Sugar Maple Leaves in Stream, Autumn Colors

On a perfect October morning, I was working my way down the lower part of Fort St. Clair Park outside Eaton, Ohio. After gawking upward at the glorious sugar maples and tulip-poplars basking in their autumn color glory, it was almost a respite to come upon this scene in the little stream that runs through the park.

The sugar maple leaves that had fallen in the stream were in various stages of submergence. Some had sunk and were temporarily hung up on the stones on the bottom. Others were underneath the water's surface but being carried slowly downstream by the current, to whatever resting place awaited each leaf.

Meanwhile, up on the water's surface, other leaves were bouyant. And so I wonder...why? Have the leaves on the bottom been in there longer, and are further decayed and waterlogged, while those in the current and on the surface more newly arrived? Probably. Makes sense to me.

Much of the delight of this particular image comes from the seemingly random arrangement of the leaves as they have been cast by the water's currents, along with the play of the sunlight through the tree crowns above, and from the reflection of the clear blue sky on the water's surface.

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