Photos

Palo Alto might not be the Hudson River Valley or Vermont, with forests of orange, red and gold. But there are colors enough to paint Palo Alto avenues in brilliant hues.

"This autumn has produced some of the best seasonal fall color displays of recent decades," according to Dave Dockter, a city arborist.

"The best autumn colors show up when a moderate rainfall occurs in early November, which coincidentally, we have already experienced," he noted.

But the season is more than the changing leaves to Palo Altans. It's the Stanford-Cal Big Game; dark beer; Gunn High School's annual turkey feast, a benefit for a local food bank; migratory birds at the Baylands; a hike at Russian Ridge or the smell of the rain, residents said.

At Fairmeadow Elementary School, autumn is marked by pilgrim pageants and papier-mache turkeys, students said.

A child's painting of the famous fall bird hangs on the wall, celebrating the season: "This is a turkey that has a blue belly and he is the most rarest turkey. He is filled with colors," a boy wrote.

Milo Sabbag, a kindergartner, likes the wind.

"It's like tornados. I can play in the leaves," he said.

Fall for Kira Emery and her brothers Pat and Sean Deaney is always about Stanford University football, Emery said.

"I was raised on Stanford football. I've been coming to Stanford games since I was 4 or 5 years old," Emery said amid family and friends who had gathered last Saturday for the Big Game.

"Fall is tailgating and good times with good friends. With Thanksgiving coming, we're very thankful," she said.

For Big Game fans, fall means football but also evokes a scattering of other memories depending on where people grew up, they said.

"I'm from Michigan. I think of Thanksgiving and turkey and being with family and the warmth of the fireplace," Dayani Waas said.

Michelle Yaeger grew up in the Los Angeles area.

"I think of the Santa Ana winds," she said.

Other locals reminisced online.

"The smell of my bike tires in the rain. Worms. My mom's lasagna. Cookies. The lovely shade of charcoal that the pavement turns after it rains," a girl named Caitlin wrote on Palo Alto Online's Town Square.

"Being out in the wind last night, watching the sky change from clear to cloudy, hearing my wind chimes tinkling, feeling those first drops of rain and smelling that ozone smell," another person wrote. "Seeing all the pumpkins, gourds and Indian corn in people's yards, on their porches and front steps, seeing fall decorations. It's such a great reminder that no matter how fast and technically savvy we've become, the pull of the seasons is still strong, still inevitable, and still so beautiful."

For those interested in gazing at fall colors, Dockter offered the following list of streets featuring spectacularly robed trees and plants:

* Maidenhair ginkgos along Greenwood Avenue, Ramona Street at Addison and Lincoln avenues, as well as in the landscape of Genencor visible from 955 Page Mill Road

* Sawtooth zelcovas on Bryant Street

* Boston ivy on the old walls of the Lanning Chateau at 325 Forest Ave.

* Dawn redwood at the Main Post Office at 380 Hamilton Ave.

* Chinese pistache on Cowper Street south of University Avenue, and Waverley Street at Embarcadero Road

* Sour gums and other trees at Elizabeth Gamble Garden

* American sweet gums along Page Mill Road between El Camino Real and Foothill Expressway

* the red oak on the front lawn of the Lucie Stern Community Center

* Shumard oaks on Porter Drive at Page Mill Road.