Other cultures also have traditions of autumn leaf viewing, especially cultures in the range of the maple-rich temperate forests. Peep is not the right word for a celebration of forests. And although the "peep show" started in the 18th and 19th centuries as a family-friendly viewing of landscapes and city scenes through stereoscopes and boite d'optique, the term now refers to a commodified, dissociated sexual gaze. Peeping Toms violate the "other" being viewed. Leaf-peeping? To peep is to cast a furtive glance. These are the colors of home, the visual manifestation of the ecosystems in which we live. In western mountains and the north woods, larch and aspen gild the evergreen. But the changing hues of leaves also hold our attention on city streets where colors of ginkgo and oak enliven asphalt's gray. This is the native range of maple, sourwood, oak, and ash, the botanical fireworks of temperate forests. Leaf-peeping is most well-known along the spine of the Appalachians, from New England to the Smoky Mountains. We clog rural roads and infuse tourist cash into local economies. Our aesthetic affinity for leaf colors finds one expression in the phenomenon known in the United States as "leaf-peeping." Suburbanites and city-dwellers flock to forested areas to soak our eyes in the delights of the season. With the help of satellite technology, study of the changing colors of leaves reveals the rapidly changing ecology of our planet. Instead, our gaze at forests is a source of both seasonal delight and awareness of local ecology. Nowadays, we're still looking at tree leaves, but no longer as food. Evolution endowed our ancestors with an extra type of light-sensing cone cell that helped them see fruit and edible young foliage against a background of mature dark green leaves. Our ability to perceive red color is an oddity, one shared by our cousins the Old World monkeys and apes, but not by most other mammals. In Autumn, the receptors in our primate eyes revel in the red and gold of trees.
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