An English autumn puts the US fall in the shade

This has been a strange discombobulating autumn for a family settling back into English life after nearly a decade in the US. We were beginning to feel confident once again with the hallmarks of Englishness, the price of petrol, the sense of irony, the mists and mellow fruitfulness. Dad was learning not to inform listeners to the Today programme that it was “a quarter of eight!” All was going swimmingly. Until we were knocked off balance by the trees.

Fall colours (“colors” to be accurate) are one of the great joys of American life. You do not get them anywhere else. This is the American conceit and we believed it with the passion of all immigrants to the New World. As the United States National Arboretum website has it: “In areas that are often cloudy for much of the autumn, with rather warm temperatures, fall colors are dull at best. This is often the case in much of Europe.”

Ouch. That puts us in our place. The ideal conditions for brilliant autumn colours are a warm wet spring combined with a sunny cool autumn. We often have the former on our side of the pond but we rarely enjoy the latter. Americans have these conditions – particularly in New England, but also extending south into Virginia – almost every year. The result is breathtaking. In particular, I always felt, when savoured alongside that other great American vista: the sleazy glamour of the road that repels and appeals to visitors – and indeed Americans themselves – in roughly equal measure.

America can be pretty ugly. The gas stations, the tattoo parlours, the $29-a-night motels, the pawn shops, the gun shops, the car showrooms, the nail bars. The tat! And then turn a corner and your jaw will drop. A panorama of the mundane (glamorous in its own right if you don’t have to live in it but ugly beyond doubt) gives way to America’s greatest asset: its space and natural beauty.

The colours of the American autumn, the coppers, the yellows, the deep reds and purples, stretch in some states for as far as the eye can see. America has always, right from the beginning, been a land of trees