I first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings when I was a young teenager back in the early 1970’s. That’s over 50 years ago now. Back then, there were only a few artist representations of what the backdrop was for the stories. The most common ones that I remember were by fantasy artists the Hildebrandt brothers. Most of the landscapes for the stories developed in my own mind, shaped by the words of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Later in the 1970’s, I moved to Utah to begin college at BYU. I immediately fell in love with the mountains, and in my little sports car, I would drive through the canyons across the Wasatch Front winter, spring, summer, and fall. Once, while cruising down American Fork Canyon with the top down in early October, I passed under a canopy of box elders and maples in brilliant tones of yellow, orange, and red. I was driving west, and the sun was setting, backlighting the foliage canopy. All at once, I recognized my location, as if I had been there a thousand times. I was in Lothlorien.

Legolas describes his motherland thus:

“There lie the woods of Lothlorien! That is the fairest of all the dwellings of my people. There are no trees like the trees of that land. For in autumn their leaves fall not, but turn to gold. Not till the spring comes and the new green opens do they fall, and then the boughs are laden with yellow flowers; and the floor of the wood is golden, and golden is the roof, and its pillars are of silver, and the bark of the trees is smooth and grey. So still our songs of Mirkwood say. My heart would be glad if we were beneath the eaves of that wood, and it were springtime!
JRR Tolkien- The Fellowship of the Ring

I have two favorite seasons and two favorite subjects to photograph. I love the wildflowers of early summer (mid-summer in the higher elevations) and I love the deciduous forests in autumn.

We live in Orem, UT, but for this mission, we have taken an apartment 40 miles to the north in downtown Salt Lake City. The commute down I-15 is horrible. It can take 90 minutes to make the trip during rush hour. Rush “hour” is a misnomer. The rush actually begins about 3:00 in the afternoon and can last well past 7:00 in the evening. Wrecks, stalled vehicles, flat tires, or just general congestion make for a painful trip to and from our mission, thus our desire to take an apartment in SLC. The home and the yard must be taken care of, so several times a week we travel back and forth.

A few weeks ago, we took a mountain road out of town to the east, up Big Cottonwood Canyon. The traffic was light, it added to our milage, but the sights were magnificent. It takes about two hours to drive that route, over Guardsman Pass, down through Wasatch Mountain State Park, through the town of Midway, and approach Orem from the east, down Provo Canyon. It’s a much better drive, less stressful. Most of these photos were made through Wasatch Mountain State Park because the colors change there first. Once the change begins, it sweeps over the hills and mountains as a surge, from the lower elevation maples, oaks, and box elders, up through the aspen forests at 7,000- 9,000 feet in elevation. Aspen forests grow by clonal shoots, and the trees share common DNA. Once the aspens begin turning yellow, they mostly change together in sync.

The quaking aspen is the state tree of Utah. The Latin name is Populus Tremuloides, so named because the leaves quake and tremble in the slightest breeze. As the leaves quake and rub on one another it sounds as though a light rain is falling in the forest.

When the air is clear and the aspens shimmer, tremble and quake, the light takes on a magical quality. The light vibrates and the leaves glow. Even today, nearly 50 years later, I can still imagine the elves of Lothlorien living among the forests of the Wasatch Mountains of Utah.