Hunt Deer Or Watch Leaves Die?

To Peep Or Not To Peep Leaves This Fall

I was on a plane last fall to do one of those typically manly fall activities, like shooting deer or losing my keys. And wouldn’t you know it, there was a couple from New York sitting next to me. I knew they were from New York because a) They started every sentence with, “I’m from New York…” And b) They complained endlessly about the quality of the in-flight pretzels.

Once they finished explaining how New York pretzels use magic water that makes them, in fact, the best pretzels in the known universe, and probably in several universes we don’t know about, they mentioned they were headed to our destination to go “leaf peeping.”

This sounded like an incredibly silly reason to travel, because who needs to hide to spy on leaves? Leaves can’t call the police. 

I started explaining this to the woman, who interrupted me to tell me she was from New York, then said she and her husband were on their way to a weekend of looking at colorful fall foliage and were not, in fact, perverts on their way to some weird plant-based sex tourism.

While I was happy for the poor, innocent plants of Central Virginia I still found this concept strange. Traveling to look at colors? I’m from Florida where we see colors the old-fashioned way: with bath salts. And we can easily experience fall by listening to the chorus of newcomers saying, “I’m from New York.” So, leaving the state for either seems a little excessive.

Turns out, I’m in the minority, and fall foliage travel isn’t limited to weird people who talk to strangers on airplanes. Leaf peeping tours draw nearly 5 million people a year, or to put it in 2024 terms, about the same as a Taylor Swift concert. There are even people who track weather patterns and base their entire autumns around fall foliage. These people are called “Extreme Leaf Peepers,” and they treat changing leaves with the same fanaticism people in Texas have for middle school football.

The couple next to me made it clear they were not extreme leaf peepers because they had other places to travel in the fall where they could complain about pretzels. But they did show me some maps that tracked changing leaves. These maps looked suspiciously like a Canadian plan to invade the Great Lakes, but since the only thing Canada seems to successfully invade is outlet malls, I assumed the maps were legit.

I asked the man why people travel to see what is, essentially, plants dying in a blaze of glory. “Oh look, Martha, that Black Tupelo looks like it won’t outlive Jimmy Carter. Where’s my Pentax?”

He said it was kind of like traveling for a football game, where you’re not really going so much for football but to see a new place. This was my second clue he was probably a Canadian spy, or possibly a communist, because what red-blooded American would travel for any reason other than football? I then realized no self-respecting foreign government would ever fly their spies on Allegiant. Even Canada.

I spent the better part of the next hour hearing about far-off exotic lands with clearly made-up names like “The Poconos” and “Eastern Ohio,” where people could drop thousands of dollars to go outside and stare at half-dead maple leaves. I said that sounded kind of morbid, then asked if he wanted to see a picture of the eight-point buck I’d just killed.

So, while I’m still not completely convinced people travel all fall to look at leaves, I guess there are worse things you could do with your weekend. Like losing your keys, for example. Or scouring the country in search of a magical in-flight pretzel.