Collecting Leaves on Mount Jo

What do you do when your middle grade novel about a 7th grade kid whose leaf collection is ruining her life is off in New York City being edited?  You head for the mountains to collect leaves, of course!

THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z won’t need my attention until copy edits are complete, and the Adirondacks were postcard-perfect this morning, so we headed out for a morning hike so my own 7th grader could work on his school leaf collection project.


An American Beech greeted us at the trailhead to Mount Jo.


With almost no wind, Heart Lake was a perfect mirror for the foliage.


I kept tripping over roots because I couldn’t stop staring up at the leaves against the blue sky.


When we hiked Mount Jo a few weeks ago, this view from the summit was shrouded in fog, but today made up for it.

Our leaf collector came home with six new specimens — Mountain Maple, Striped Maple, Bigtooth Aspen, American Mountain Ash, American Beech, and Balsam Fir.  The rest of us came home with pockets full of rocks and pine cones, tired legs, and lighter hearts. 

20 Replies on “Collecting Leaves on Mount Jo

  1. Absolutely gorgeous. We have very little red in our fall foliage and I so want to head east some fall so I can see the colours first-hand. (Of course, now we have very few leaves left at all. We lead the continent in the race for winter. *sigh* A race I wouldn’t mind losing once in a while.)

  2. And today was nice, too – if a little cloudier. I was in Southern Vermont for a school visit, and the leaves along the lake are really stunning.

  3. Hello. I am from NJ, but have lived in Florida since 1993. And I miss the changing of the leaves. I am always asking my sisters to take pictures of this process and send it to me, but they always forget.

    So thank you for posting these beautiful pictures for your blog-readers to see. I appreciate them more than you know…

  4. Oh – I’m so glad my photos made you smile. Autumn is my absolute favorite season, so I’m out enjoying the leaves any chance I get (even when there’s no leaf collection going on!)

  5. Beautiful photos Kate! The one of Heart Lake took my breath away! It’s amazing.

    THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z sounds very intriguing.