Otoño en Graná

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Orange is my favorite color. When most people hear that they look at me with surprise in their eyes, not green or blue? Orange is often dismissed as an important color due to the orange that's omnipresent in the states-- traffic cones and neon hipster sweatbands. Yet the abandoned orange to which i am referring is beautifully displayed in Granada during the crisp autumn days. Living on the coast my entire life I had never seen leaves change with the season. Bright yellow dapples Gran Via as I walk to class-- huge orange crunchy leaves scatter the side walks. Against the violet evening sky Puerta Elvira softly glows, an artificial sunset, a distant reminder of an Arabic past. Grey billowing clouds relax behind old piles of rustic bricks the nostalgic scene be-speckled by small olive bushes. Bright sunshine greets sleepy eyes as stark blue skies without clouds. Reds, oranges, yellows, dark greens. A sense of inner warmth-- a sense of remembrance and excitement for whats to come. Autumn, another change, another part of nature's cycle-- temporary yet forever present. A slow decline as slow as the solitary leaf wafting downwards towards the white cobblestones. The snow-capped mountains, my own Sierra Nevadas give a different environment than my coastal roots resulting in a different frame of mind, a different mood and mentality hosted by the single season of fall. Yes, I adore the color orange-- Granadian orange, orange in its most natural state-- not warped into some garish warning sign, a color comfortably assimilated in its environment, finally fitted, a change complete, a new chapter begun.

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