Fall.
I've never lived anywhere previous to here when I was able to experience Fall. LA doesn't have seasons in the traditional sense - "Fall" means wildfires, "Winter", mudslides. "Spring" is basically what we called "June Gloom", the cold, clammy weather that moves in in late April and lingers oftentimes into August, pissing off the tourists. The best way to tell what season it was in the rest of the country was to drive down Sunset and check out the background on the Marlboro billboards. Cowboy in snow? Must be winter. When the PC police had those taken down, you were basically on your own.
We had "Faux Fall" at our house in the hills owing to the huge number of sycamores and oaks. But lacking the hard freeze necessary to get the color ball rolling, the leaves usually just went from green to dead and bypassed the pretty part. So we got all the leaf cleanup, without any of the magic.
But here in Bako they have the real deal. About two weeks ago the temps briefly dipped below freezing at night, and it's as if someone fired a starter's pistol - all the trees seem to be racing through the full color spectrum. Most of them are still in the golden orange phase, but quite a few have moved on into brilliant reds.
I'm pretty sure it all natural, and not the trees rusting in the toxic air, but either way, it's beautiful.
