On a beautiful, clear-blue Arizona Saturday morning, with a nice touch of Fall in the air and a very pleasant temperature of 70 degrees, two Motorola Hiking Club members, Chuck Parsons and Laurie Jacobson (with her faithful and eager four-legged companion, Spackles), arrived at the Kachina Trail Trailhead to get in a few miles of hiking, as well as view the annual Fall extravaganza of colors produced by the vast stands of aspen along the slopes of the towering San Francisco Peaks, north of the Flagstaff area.

There were also quite a few others with the same intentions, as evidenced by the large number of vehicles in the parking lot and the many fellow hikers (two and four-legged) that we encountered along the trail. This was just about as crowded as we have ever seen this trail, although it certainly wasn’t crowded with Motorola Hiking Club hikers.

This is no doubt the peak season for sightseeing in this area, since it is one of the best locations in Arizona to view the colorful Fall aspens.

The Kachina Trail, lying entirely within the 18,200 acre Kachina Peaks Wilderness Area, starts at an elevation of 9,300 feet and traverses west to east across the southern flank of the San Francisco Peaks for six miles, gradually dropping to 8,800 feet at its junction with the Weatherford Trail. The first few miles of this trail pass through a mixed forest of pine, Douglas fir, a few spruce, and our main objective, the golden aspen that blanket these peaks in a breathtaking rich golden mantle for a couple of weeks every Fall, drawing visitors from around the state.

At about the 1.5-mile mark along the trail we began to encounter a large burn area of untold number of acres in size, the faint but distinctly acrid smell of charred wood and smoke still lingering in the air over this blackened area of the forest. The charred remains of hundreds of forest giants stand starkly against the deep blue sky as silent testimony to the raging inferno that swept through this area probably only a few years ago – a depressing sight but, nevertheless, part of the normal cycle of life for the forest.

Fall is a time of major transition for the forest. Its arrival signals the end of the long siege of summer’s heat, but it is also a precursor to the long, icy grip of Old Man Winter. The once lush green forest ferns of summer, many waist high, along much of the length of this trail’s passage through the forest are now mostly brown, dry, and dead, victims of the now frosty nights on these mountain slopes. It is now only a matter of weeks before they will be buried under the deep snows of winter. By spring they will be decaying and returning their nutrients to the earth, to emerge once again as lush green new plants, completing the perpetual cycle of life in these enchanting forests. Just a few Blue Lupines and purple Daisies still manage to maintain their fragile hold on life, as the nights grow longer and colder in these mountain forests.

The many aspen trees along this trail were also in a state of transition. Some were still fully green, some just starting to turn, some about half turned, and some by now completely bare of leaves. Quite a few of the aspen, however, were now sporting their full splendor of Fall finery, wearing a beautiful golden yellow crown of leaves.

On several occasions along our journey through the forest Laurie and I would witness the slightest breeze sending a deluge of golden leaves showering down from the canopy high overhead, carpeting the forest floor and our trail in a colorful blanket of yellow. These too would soon become nutrients for the forest soil and help renew the cycle of life, as the aspen awaken from their long winter sleep next spring and draw their life-giving energy from the soil and the sun, enabling them to put on another crown of lush green for the summer months that lay ahead.

The aspen, the signature tree that defines these peaks of Northern Arizona, is actually the most widely distributed tree in all of North America, ranging from Alaska to Newfoundland to the Sky Islands of Southern Arizona. It is frequently the first tree to start the process of renewal in a burn area of the forest. Every single stand of aspen, however large in size, propagated from a single tree sending out root sprouts in all directions just beneath the surface of the soil. The largest single organism on Earth is not a large fungus colony or a large bacteria culture or even the largest of the Giant Sequoias, but instead a stand of 41,000 aspens in the Wasatch Range of northern Utah, all propagated from one single aspen. Quite a unique tree.

At about the four-mile mark of our journey along the Kachina Trail we stopped to enjoy lunch on a shady slope below Freidlin Prairie, with a spectacular view of the Flagstaff area far below us. Laurie, the compassionate lover of all living things great and small, rescued a rather frail looking baby Horny Toad from a certain and untimely demise on the busy trail and gently placed it upon a small rock pile, where it seemed to enjoy sunning itself on the warm rocks and posing for a few pictures.

We left the little toad on his rock pile, soaking up the late afternoon rays of the Fall sun, as we started back on our return trip to the trailhead, wondering how and if he would be able to survive the long, icy grip of winter on these mountain slopes.

We hoped this little Horny Toad would be able to put on just a little more weight and find sufficient shelter for itself to hibernate through the long winter months that lay ahead and then emerge, along with all the other many life forms of the forest, next spring to assume its role in the great cycle of life in these enchanted forests and mountains of Northern Arizona.