I am afflicted with a strange form of amnesia. I remember most everything, though increasingly I cannot remember phone numbers in the way that I once could. For that, I blame technology, as my brain has grown lazy from the efficiency by which my phone can recall numbers on my behalf. While my memory is quite intact, I cannot seem to recall the present season of the prior year. This is not true for all seasons, because during the summer of 2013 I can certainly remember the sights and sounds of the summer of 2012. And while deep inside the winter of 2012 I probably remembered the winter of 2011 with ease. Instead, this is a fall specific sort of amnesia, and I cannot ever remember the colors of the prior year with any detail.
With that, I look around the deciduous shoreline of this lake, and I see colors that are dim, and dull, and still mostly green. They are not bright green, mind you, but dull greens that hinge on yellow are still green. There are browns in that woody horizon, and there are some yellows and a few showy reds, but I generally do not see the colors of late October. Looking out my office windows now, I see one tree stripped of its leaves, and the others are all still brandishing some scale of green. This is fall, the smack dab late-ish middle of it, and I do not see the colors that I swear I’ve seen in the falls that have gone before. I have seasonal blindness, and I’m not sure what I’m looking at, or what exactly it is supposed to look like.
The Wisconsin Tourism site has a handy fall color guide, pictured above, and that guide shows Walworth County at 100% of its peak color. In case you haven’t been following the Wisconsin Department of Tourism web or television campaigns, their most recent ad features a player from the Green Bay Packers. This should tell you all that you need to know about the effectiveness of the campaign, and allow you to judge the lack of brilliance present in the minds of those who foisted this campaign upon us. Wisconsin thinks that the best way to get Illinoisans, and with specificity, Chicagoans, to vacation here is by putting a member of the hated Packers in their ads? Do the Pure Michigan commercials feature a whipped up Ndamukong Suh? Wisconsin is a great state, with great political leadership, but there’s an absence of common sense in the tourism bureau.
But they did give us this handy map, and as I take issue with their ridiculous advertising campaign, I must also protest the label that Walworth County is at 100% of its peak color. If we are indeed at the peak, then my seasonal amnesia is far worse than I had originally surmised. If our peak colors are mostly green, then everything I ever knew is all wrong. Fall colors, by my recollective eye, are supposed to be vibrant, with yellows and reds and browns. And if not vibrant, then they should be somber, with dull maroons and varied shades of brown, but either way they should not be predominantly green. Walworth County is not at its peak color, not yet anyway, which is a wonderful thing for you if you fear you’ve missed fall. This weekend coming, this weekend will be the peak of fall color at Lake Geneva, which means you still have time.
There are lots of things I do during a Lake Geneva Autumn, and this weekend provides the perfect time to engage in all of these favorites. The Orchards are brimming with apples, and I can attest to eating no fewer than 5 tree plucked apples on this past Saturday afternoon while wandering through the Royal Oak Farm Orchard wondering what I need to do to my scrawny apple saplings in order that they might produce such a prolific harvest. I wondered this, and then the wagon driver told me that most of the fruit bearing trees are 15 or more years old, which shattered my dreams of apple picking at my own stand of trees. Anyway, I’ll concede the fact that most boats are out of the water (but not mine…), so a chilly, but scenic, boat ride will not be on the weekend agenda. The shore path never closes, so kicking a few leaves down the path should definitely follow up a trip to the orchard.
Fall is, perhaps above all other seasons, the ideal time to be a tourist in a town that most of us know rather well. Cool temperatures keep the bulky masses away from town, and so a weekend saunter down Main Street, with a coffee in one hand and a full shopping bag in the other is a rather pleasant experience. Grab lunch, stay for dinner, hit the orchard and walk the path. It’s time to enjoy fall, Lake Geneva style, and this weekend is the perfect time to do so.