The other day, President Barack Obama signed an official proclamation designating September 2009 as National Wilderness Month. My husband, our friends Reed and Dave and I celebrated it with a hike into the James Peak Wilderness. When we left Boulder shortly after 8:00 a.m. with the intention of hiking to Rogers Pass, the sun shone in a clear blue sky. When we arrived at the East Portal Trailhead (below), the sky was still blue, and the sun was still bright.
We hiked up the trail that is familiar in winter and in summer. It leads to Rogers Pass, but there are also side trails to Arapahoe, Forest and Crater Lakes. We've never seen so many raspberries on bushes in open areas. Are the bears all working the garbage cans closer to town rather than the raspberry bushes? I stopped to pick and eat every time I spotted red. My companions nibbled a few, but I went after as many as I could.
Picking and eating those sweet, fresh-off-the-bush berries proved so distracting that it took me a while to notice that the sky was quickly clouding over. It was only later, when it started getting cool and threatened to sprinkle, that I stopped to put on a long-sleeved shirt.
It's 5 miles or so from the trailhead to the pass, but we weren't interested in getting wet, so a few miles in, we turned around. The descent was quick, the rain held off and once we were out of the conifers, I started really looking at the grasses and bushes, which definitely showed their true fall colors.
From afar, the aspens were beginning to turn to gold.
Closeups revealed spots of dark brown and black.
Several years ago, the aspens along the Front Range went from green to black to fallen to the ground without ever showing their classic autumn beauty. Here's hoping it doesn't happen again in during National Wilderness Month '09. 
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