Fall arrived in my valley, and the trees got that bright blush that came from the embarrassment of knowing they'd soon be naked.

I met this couple who were on a cross-country leaf peeping odyssey, by bicycle. "Leaf peeping" sounded a bit indecent to me, as if the couple were hiding in bushes, spying on the trees. They had peeped their way from state to state, starting from way up in northern Vermont, and were meandering their way down the country. These peepers were lousy with health. They looked like they breathed only macrobiotic oxygen and were shined upon by raw organic sunshine.

The couple took a picture of the poetry stand and promised to include me in their list of roadside curiosities. I probably should have asked what they meant by that, but maybe I wasn't as curious as they thought.

Then they put their tanned, glisteny faces cheek to cheek and asked if I wouldn't like to take some pictures too? "Oh, great idea," I said, and went off to retrieve Dougie's camera. When I came back the peepers gave me big smiles and made little bunny ears behind each other's heads with their fingers. They didn't seem to realize they were kind of blocking my best view of the trees. I leaned around them and got some pretty good pictures of the foliage.

The peepers strung up hammocks for the night. I offered to let them crash in my house, but they said hammocks outdoors were really the only way to go. They told me about various tribes all over the world who had no use for the modern beds ballyhooed by the Western military-industrial mattress complex.

After the leaf peeping couple left, they were followed by various other foliage enthusiasts who rattled down the road in their RVs with bumper stickers all over them, sometimes trailing small boats, ATVs, snowmobiles, you name it. They would see my poetry stand signs, and decide to stop by. "Like Burma-Shave signs!" a few of the old-timers remarked (and then mused about whether it was "Myanmar-Shave" nowadays). The visitors would ask me, a bit desperately, if I sold propane or live bait.

"You want the filling station down the road," I'd tell them.

"Maps? Tobacco?"

"Filling station," I'd tell them. "Just poetry here."

"Well doesn't that beat all?" they'd say. And they'd take pictures of themselves in front of the poetry stand, pointing at the sign and making funny faces. Then they'd gaze around at the colorful trees, the yellow-green and the orange-green and the rust-red leaves (still with green veins—always the last part to change), and they'd ask me, "Is this Peak Foliage yet or what?"

At first I admitted I had no idea. So the people would turn back to stare at the leaves and sigh. They wanted to see leaves that were as far from green as possible without being the least bit brown. Nobody wanted to commit to being satisfied unless they knew for sure they'd achieved the ultimate leaf-peeping experience. I felt bad that their joy hung in the balance. So I started telling people, "You're in luck! The peak just so happens to be occurring today, at 2:17 in the afternoon." And they'd check the time on their phones and get all excited, saying, "Ohmygosh, that's less than an hour!" They'd shake open some lawn chairs by the side of the road and sit there, staring and staring at the leaves, double-checking the time every few minutes. Then, finally, they'd exclaim, "Here it comes . . . right . . . noooooow! The absolute peak! Wow!" They'd cheer the trees' grand performance, take some pictures, and pile back into their RVs, content to cross that experience off the itinerary.