A red you won't find anywhere else

The maple at the bamboo's edge is a deep, deep red — not orange, but true red, and when the morning light slants across it, it seems almost to glow of itself. The air is crisp, floating with the smell of fallen leaves and damp earth; one deep breath and the cool sinks all the way to the chest. A wind crosses just as one enters Arashiyama, a few leaves drifting down, one settling on a coat's shoulder — left there, unbrushed, carried on through the bamboo, across the Togetsukyo bridge, until where one meant to go is forgotten.

This is koyo, Japan's autumn leaves: autumn's most serious matter, as solemn as spring's blossom, perhaps more so — a national koyo-front forecast, live pages to check the colour by region day by day, whole Novembers arranged around it. For the Japanese, watching the leaves turn from green to red and fall one by one is among the year's few sanctioned moments to slow down and grieve a little, on purpose.

The koyo front pushes south from Hokkaido in late September; late October into November is the season for Kanto and Kansai. Kyoto's Arashiyama and Tofuku-ji are the most renowned — and renown draws crowds. That year, travelling with my mother, I chose the quieter Mount Yoshino in Nara instead — her legs are not what they were, no good for long queues and jostling; the old temples set against red maple are just as moving, and far quieter, so she could walk slowly, and a grown child needn't glance back at every step.

Step into the woods and the clamour outside falls away behind. The leaves underfoot are wet and soft, no crisp northern crunch, only a muffled give; a stream murmurs low at the foot of the slope, birdsong drops from some unseen tree, the air cold and clean — one breath and the nose is full of resin and damp leaf. Mother walked slowly, and the grown child slowed too, slow enough to hear each other breathe. Now and then she stopped — not from tiredness, but to look a moment longer — and waiting beside her was a walking side by side, unhurried, of a kind these years had rarely allowed.

Two moments are best: full colour, the peak of saturation; and the leaf-blizzard, those two or three days when leaves fall in such drifts that the ground outshines the branches. Luck held that day, and the leaf-blizzard came — one gust, and the whole flight of stone steps looked as if a full bucket of red had been thrown across it, red leaves landing on shoulders, hair, eyelashes, falling with a soft hush. Mother stopped there, head tipped back, looking for a long, long time; no one hurried her. In her youth she raised a child alone, and moments like this — to do nothing, only watch a single leaf fall — had been all too few for her.

The maple leaf that fell on a shoulder kept its company half the morning, then slipped away at some unmarked moment, the leaving unnoticed. But the second of its falling is remembered exactly: the wind passed, the red drifted down, and came to rest on Mother's shoulder; she reached up, took it, and pressed it into the small notebook she carries. One cannot take Arashiyama away, nor that dry cold air — but watching her slow down, gazing in peace at a whole mountain of red, it became clear at last: this slowness, sought out by way of a detour, was the very thing meant for her. And I think that if you, too, came here beside someone growing older, you would understand how rare such slowness is.