This one has an end date.

The Zao Echo Line runs twenty-six kilometers over the Zao mountains, joining Miyagi to Yamagata, and every year the snow closes it. The closing date falls around the third of November, and the exact day is announced in the middle of October. So people planning a trip here check two things: how far along the color is, and how much longer the road will be open.

The color comes down the mountain. It starts near the Okama crater at the end of September, moves through the middle slopes, and reaches the hot spring town of Togatta around the end of October. The closures come down the same way, section by section from the top. For a few weeks the leaves are turning just ahead of a road going shut behind them.

Partway up there is a pull-off called Takimidai, and from it you can see the Sankai Falls across the valley — a hundred and eighty-one meters, falling in three stages. There is no path to the bottom of it. You look at it from here or not at all, which means it stays exactly as it is, year after year, while everything around it is on a schedule.

A hurrying autumn and an unhurried waterfall, both visible from the same stretch of road.