This post is part of a series from Rick Braveheart. our wonderful resident photographer. Please see more of his work here.

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
~ George Eliot

For me, I have always felt a great joy for fall. I love the cooling temperatures and the fresh outdoor smells. It’s also a time of brilliant plant and tree colors, deep blue skies and an aliveness in the animals as they prepare for winter. It’s also the time for raking leaves, carving pumpkins, and savoring hot cider. I feel even more alive in the fall. Gone are the hot and humid days of summer that sometimes seem oppressing, but there’s always a knowing that the cold and cloudy days of winter are just around the corner.

Since I spent mid-October to mid-November photographing in Arizona, I knew before I arrived here that I’d miss the peak fall color. But to my surprise, I discovered that fall in the south fade in a gentle, slow and almost elegant manner. Although I’m here late in the season, there are still brilliant colors everywhere in the forests, mountains and grass lands. It is the wide variety of trees in their various stages of preparing for winter however which create the most brilliant colors in this kaleidoscope of nature and, with something to please almost every eye. Even in areas where the trees are bare, the leaves blanket the ground like a lush carpet and when accompanied by the area’s frequent fog this time of year, create an almost magical storybook quality.

There are over 130 varieties of trees in Western North Carolina including tulip, hemlock, magnolia, oak, birch, sugar maple, mountain ash and Fraser fir. And, folks at the North Carolina Native Plant Society tell me this section of the state is home to over 4,000 plant species. This morning I heard the forecast for snow by week’s end and within ten minutes I was heading out of the cabin with camera gear in tow feeling a great urgency to photograph every tree and plant that’s still in its fall colors. Yet, once the trees begin to surround me, their magnificence slowed me down enough to breath and appreciate the beauty, both large and small, that can be found everywhere here, and in every season. I suddenly feel that urgency melt away, and I begin to hear once again the call of different plants and trees who are asking to be photographed.