Our best images of trees and changing leaves
Welcome to October newsletter, we present our best photos of trees and turning leaves, consider four ways to save forests, discover a sunken U-boat off the U.S. East Coast … and remember mountaineering legend Hilaree Nelson.
It’s easy to take trees for granted.
And yet, in one of the Earth’s miracles, they turn light into life. As leaves turn in the Northern Hemisphere, we present some of our best images of trees (above, near Utah’s Escalante River)—and offer a valentine to their autumn offspring.
See the full story here.
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Riding through the seasons: Horseback riders stroll through colorful autumn foliage in Vermont. An archive image from Nat Geo Explorer Emory Kristof, 1967.
Last tree before Antarctica: Searching for Earth’s southernmost tree, scientists traverse windswept Isla Hornos, on the tail of South America. In the evenings, the winds that drive deadly tall waves just offshore forced team members to hunker down for meals in the shelter of shrubs and patches of dwarf forest. Read about the wet, windy, chilly, mushy, stomach-turning search for that Tierra del Fuego tree.
Escaping the loggers: Italy’s Abruzzo, Lazio, and Molise National Park is home to some of the oldest beech forests in Europe. Thanks to a location that’s difficult to access, these trees have escaped felling for centuries. See more from Europe’s stunning old-growth forests—and check out four ways we can save forests for the next generations.
Bit by bit: A leaf turns from summer green to autumn red in Adirondack Park, New York. This image is from a gallery keyed to the fall equinox.
Hello grizzly! Autumn is also ideal for viewing wildlife with the changing foliage, such as this grizzly bear spotted by Nat Geo Explorer Aaron Huey at Polychrome Pass in Alaska’s Denali National Park. Here are the top U.S. national parks for viewing the foliage.
STORIES WE'RE FOLLOWING
• Remembering pioneering ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson
• What archaeology tells us about the real Jesus
• A forest bunker may hold the key to chemicals’ effects on our bodies
• At a Las Vegas casino, the dolphins have been dying
• Long-ago treasure emerges below London’s streets
• New scholarship shows broader role for women in ancient Greece
• See the last stonemasons tending to England’s cathedrals
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
It’s a U-boat! When explorers discover a shipwreck underwater, they leave a calling card of sorts to let others know it had been previously found and documented. Captain Ross Cassway (pictured above, floating to the surface) did just that after he and a group located the last missing German U-Boat that had been in U.S. waters. Read about the exciting discovery here.
OVERHEARD AT NAT GEO
Taking action: When 22-year-old Eyal Weintraub found few climate crisis resources for Spanish speakers, he made a podcast to reach them. The Nat Geo Young Explorer also helped organize the Earth Day climate strike in Buenos Aires (pictured above). Meet Weintraub and two other ground-breaking Nat Geo Explorers in the latest episode of our podcast, Overheard at Nat Geo.
Related: Colombians are protecting their land—and paying with their lives
PHOTO OF THE DAY
First Communion: Half of America’s more than 62 million Latinos identify as Roman Catholic—including this group of girls playing outside after their first Communion Mass. The image, from a 2018 Nat Geo story, was taken in La Puente, California, in Los Angeles County, which has more than 4.8 million Latinos. The number of Americans identifying as Latino or Hispanic rose 23 percent from 2010 to 2020, outpacing the nation’s 7 percent overall population growth.
