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Category: seasons

Last Stand

Last Stand

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Woke up to a white world. Each twig and limb covered with heavy, clinging snow. Deceptive in the gloaming, when shapes are not what they appear.

As the morning grew lighter I could make out black roads and driveway, grass tops bursting through the blanket. But the holly is still dolloped, and the first faint blooms of witch hazel, that thin yellow furze, are coated in frosting. Every few minutes the wind loosens a clump of snow, which retains its twig shape for an instant, then vanishes in a pouf of powder.

I looked ahead at the forecast; in a few days we’ll have 60s and 70s. This morning’s weather is a last stand of sorts. It is beauty at its most basic, which is fleeting. By noon tree limbs will be barren bark.

Meanwhile, I fill my eyes with the scene out the window. Today it’s winter; next week it will be spring.

Monochromatic

Monochromatic

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More snow last night, a few inches, enough to coat the mud and the leaves, the daffodil and crocus shoots. Enough to make it clear that it’s still winter.

Temperature-wise there has been no doubt of late, with single digit wind chills. But palette is important, too, and today February looks the part.

We are back to a monochromatic world. Black trees, leaves, lamp posts and pickets. White everything else. It’s better this way, I think.

Passage to Spring

Passage to Spring

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Lent arrives early this year — before Valentine’s Day. This is cruel timing for those of us contemplating a 40-day ban on chocolate.

But if it gives us an early Easter and an early spring (not that those two necessarily go together … ) then bring it on.

Meanwhile, the wind is howling in from the west and roads are slicked from last night’s freeze. This will be the coldest week of the winter. A fitting time, then, to begin a spiritual pilgrimage, a journey, a passage.

I always remind myself that “lent” comes from the word “to lengthen.” Seen this way, then, lent is a passage to spring. It is a time of lengthening days, of birds on the wing. A time of promise that soon we’ll be green and growing again. 

Dreams of Spring

Dreams of Spring

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Punxsutawney Phil has spoken. We will have an early spring. Time to commence some serious daydreaming.

In my mind’s eye I see the three-inch daffodils out by the front tree emerging unscathed from the (rapidly melting) snow. I see them grow taller and plumper by the hour soon to erupt in yellow flower.

I see the hydrangeas, not frost nipped this year, exploding in riotous pinks and lavenders.

And the rosy-flowered tree behind the garage, the one that was blooming a few weeks ago, it has somehow gotten a miraculous second wind.

But for now, the snow still lies deep in woods and fields. And all my dreams of spring lie buried beneath it, buried beneath a thick white coverlet.

Stark Days

Stark Days

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Sunday morning, out early in a new day, I felt the difference immediately. The road was lighter, the woods yawning open to the left and right. 

It wasn’t a cheerful lightness. It was a vacancy. Something was missing.

It took me a minute to realize what had happened, that the hard rains of Saturday had flushed most of the leaves from the trees, that we had, overnight, slipped from autumn into winter. That the stark days had begun.

Cicadas in the City

Cicadas in the City

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Out the door and down New Jersey Avenue. The familiar arching trees shade the hotel and taxi stand. The Capitol lies ahead; its scaffolding gleams in the noonday sun.

I run for every light, avoid the waits, move as much as possible. It’s the pace that does it, I think — a steady cadence does much to loosen the joints and free up the mind. But scenery helps also, and yesterday’s was perfect. Blue skies, cicadas still singing, all the bustle of early September.

For many years I mourned New York City. Washington, D.C., could never measure up in quirkiness or energy or street life. But in the last several years I’ve mellowed to D.C. I appreciate the cicadas, for instance, and the tall trees that shelter them. Their crescendo is the sound of hot southern cities, a sound that says slow down. No one heeds it, of course, but at least it’s there, mixed in with car horns and sirens.

High Season

High Season

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This is the high season for trail walking. Chilly mornings give way to warm, dry afternoons. The air has a freshness to it, which energizes and motivates. It pushes us up and out, makes us move even when we don’t much feel like it.

I feel like trail-walking this morning but new responsibilities have me in the office today. If I’m lucky I’ll pound some pavement at lunchtime, and that will energize and motivate in a different way.

But for now I’ll dream of a clearing in the forest, a hard-packed path winding out from it, oaks and maples and hickories arching over browning ferns and reddening blackgum. The trail won’t yet be covered but there will be enough leaves to provide a crunch when I walk. A soundtrack for the stroll.

Bonus Week

Bonus Week

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Labor Day is as late as it can ever be. School buses stand at the ready. Pools are getting that tired, slimy feel they have late in the season. The mint and basil plants have bolted. The woods are strung with spider webs.

In other words, summer is winding down. But we have a gift this year, a string of hot, high-humidity days; an extra shot of summer — a bonus week.

I try to save the weather, store it in some psychic, seasonal account so that when the frigid wind blows in my face as I walk north on Second Street I will be ready for it. I will be filled with summer, wearing an armor of remembered warmth.

Surely the only way to enter the next season is to be completely through with the one that went before. This week we have seven extra days to accomplish this feat.

Just Sitting

Just Sitting

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Who was it that said, “Sometimes I sit and think — and sometimes I just sit”?

This is a “just sitting” kind of morning. Which is too bad since I have lots of work to do. But for a few minutes “just sitting” is what I plan to do.

The cicadas are in high-summer mode. Their sounds ripple through the air, the aural equivalent of a dip in the pool or a Popsicle dripping down the arm on a sticky afternoon.

The morning air is cool and full of promise. I want to bottle it for a stripped-bare winter day. I want to store up inside, which is the only place that counts.

But for now … I want to just sit.

Summer Day

Summer Day

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Yesterday was the perfect summer day. I thought this even on the way to the dentist, and if you notice it then, the impression must be valid.

The air was weighty and warm and filled with the sound of cicadas. There was no rain (this was key). And the morning held the promise of just enough heat.

In late afternoon, when I was walking Copper in the woods, a couple of big frogs were bellowing from the creek. They plopped in the water as we walked by. The katydids were chirping slowly, as if they could barely be roused from their dreamy, midsummer naps.

Spiders had been busy and webs were strung between the trees like tiny Buddhist prayer flag ropes. When they caught a leaf it waved cheerily in the breeze.