County Road 23 and Sir Isaac Newton

We seem to often make use of the word ‘glorious’ around this time of year when the forest comes alive with colour. I thought about that on a recent late afternoon as I was heading south on County Road 23 that runs between Rednersville and Ameliasburg. I only describe the road location in more detail because if you are anything like me, running County road numbers through one’s brain is like a game of Parcheesi or Snakes and Ladders where you wait to hear a number called to see if you are really going to get to your destination: say where again, it’s what and please repeat that combination code on how to find it? I’m also admitting to the old school direction- finding tradition, using the sun’s bearings and/or the half-folded wine map that sits as a bleached and withered artefact on the dashboard of my truck. Web mapping is not yet the ‘thing’ down here along Slab Creek.

So, back to County Road 23, and in the 3 p.m. sunlight lies a luminous spread, an autumn wall of forest—the Ameliasburgh escarpment— a rise of land that is part of the ancient shore of glacial Lake Iroquois. I attempt to break down the colours I’m seeing, differentiating the spectrum in view up ahead; I inquire within about my emotional response to the colours; how the primary ones—red, blue and yellow—mix in the natural blend. I must say that boredom relief from driving takes many turns in my thought process sometimes, but please feel confident that so far it hasn’t imperilled my abilities to be mindful behind the wheel. Next, my stream of thinking calls up Sir Isaac Newton and his experiments with a triangular prism in 1676. He watched as white sunlight moving through a slit of paper and directed through a prism separated into colours. He then tried taking a projected image of the resulting spectrum of colour and found that by sending it through a converging prism, colours merged back into white light again.

And so began centuries of investigations into colour and its sciences and how we process it; how there are limitless ways that our perceptions of colour affect the simplest of our daily rounds. Think of a stoplight and what the individual colours mean to us. Travel the world and realize those colours carry the same universal message. Have a conversation with a product or interior designer and they will wax elegant about colours affecting our moods— and not just colour alone, but how and where they receive light, the amount of pigment saturation; how colours placed in proximity change in hue and can distort or complement each other—take the orange and blue iconic and pleasing palette of the region of Provence in the south of France, or the use of gold and purples in religious interpretations; the symbolism of black which is the presence of all colours and the various meanings of white which is the absence of colour. And how many shades of white? When next in your favourite paint store check out the catalogue of shades of white to really challenge your decision process. Let me see is it String or Western Cloud or Milk I would like on my walls? A Flat, Satin, Gloss sheen will also dictate the emphasis according to light reflection.

Chlorophyll is a molecule in plants that absorbs sunlight and converts it to food energy, something our body requires. Its dominant green color that we see in summer is composed of mostly blue and also with some red particles. The change of sunlight, temperature and moisture in fall begins to break down the chlorophyll and the dominant green fades, making visible other colours like yellow and orange that comprise it. From behind the wheel I notice how with a shift of light, the forest has segmented into a jumble of other colour blends including purple and black, tones that begin to set the spectrum of the winter forest.

By now I’ve reached the top of the hill and sit at the stop sign, satisfied with passing time in abstract thought. But next I’m heading home, anxious to dig out my old Scottish woollen tweed jacket to wear the fashion that the woods have bequeathed us for the season.