ABSTRACT
A few years ago, my sampling partner and I were preparing to perform benthic macroinvertebrate sampling protocols in a wadeable section in one of the many reaches of the Yellowstone River. It was autumn, windy, and cold. Before joining my partner knee deep in the slow-moving frigid waters, I stood for a moment at the bank and took in the surroundings. Except for a line of gold, the pallet of autumn is austere in Yellowstone. The coniferous forests west of the Mississippi lack the bronzes, the coppers, the peach-tinted yellows, the livid scarlets that set mixed stands of the East afl ame. All I could see in that line was the quaking aspen and its gold. This species, showing the closest thing to eastern autumn in the west, is gathered in the narrow, rounded crowns of Populus tremuloides. The aspen trunks stood white and antithetical against the darkness of the fi rs and pines. The shiny pale gold leaves, sensitive to the slightest rumor of wind, agitated and bounced the sun into my eyes. Each tree scintillated, like a heap of gold coins in free fall. The aspens tried desperately, by all their fl ash and motion, to make up for the area’s failure to fi ll the full spectrum of fall. But I didn’t care much … I certainly wasn’t disappointed. While it is true that little is comparable to leaf fall in autumn along the Appalachian Trail of my home, it simply didn’t matter. Nature’s venue with its display of gold against dark green eased the task that was before me. Bone-chilling water and all-it simply didn’t matter.
