This has been a spectacular autumn. Perhaps it's Nature's feigned apology for a less than stellar summer, or maybe a moment of glory before the inescapable, if often beautiful, travails of the Upstate winter.

The colors seem more brilliant this year, and theyFve stayed a little longer. I've only recently learned that those stunning oranges, reds and yellows are there all along, just masked by the vibrant summer green. In the fall, the leaves stop producing the chlorophyll that makes them verdant, allowing the autumn hues to shine through.

Our trees are a magnificent and irreplaceable Otsego County resource. As much as we revel in the living landscape they create for our yearround appreciation, we need to be aware of the absolutely critical work they do, while they stand there looking gorgeous.

In our seemingly clean and unpolluted Otsego County of 75 people per square mile, we produce twice as many carbon pollutants as our stately and hard-working trees can clean from our breathing air. Almost half of those carbons, coming as no surprise at all, are from automobile exhaust, according to Diane Vogler, professor of biology at SUNY Oneonta.

Automobile pollutants are rough stuff, contributing to almost 50,000 deaths nationwide per year. Add that to the nearly 50,000 people killed on the nation's roadways and the price of our auto habit gets dearer and dearer.

HereFs a simple act to help reduce those grim statistics. You see this one coming, don't you? Walk more, drive less.

It's a powerful addiction, the automobile. Most of us have grown up with it and driving wherever and whenever we want is second nature. Cars are so much a part of our lives that we almost nonchalantly accept the enormous cost, the inconvenience, the poisoned air, and vast expanses of asphalt and the human and animal deaths. The exaggerated reliance on a car causes otherwise rational people to act peculiarly. What else would explain SUNY college students, in the full bloom of youth, driving a whole eight blocks because it's uphill and too hard to walk? Sheesh, how whiny can you be?

Our trees are a natural wonder. They clean the air we foul, produce little things like oxygen, food and lumber, prevent erosion and provide shade and sound barriers, all while surrounding us with incomparable beauty.

Let's give them a break and don't make them work quite so hard. Leave your car in the drive one or two days a week. Stay home, work from home, carpool, take a bus, ride a bike or walk to school and work. Effort? A bit, but relative to crossing the Atlantic on a clipper ship, settling the West or the Red Sox winning the World Series, it's pretty minor. And the collective result of cleaner air, saved lives and lower fuel prices could be major.

Brenda Berstler is the founder of the Walking Example Group (WE-GO) a non-profit organization encouraging walking and walkable communities. Visit their website at www.we-go.org.