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Category: seasons

Leaves and Sky

Leaves and Sky

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Afternoon quickly turns to evening these days, and if I walk a little later than usual, the moon is my companion. It was so yesterday, a pale half, and beside it in the sky, a tangle of contrails.

The balmy air, the early evening and the usual group of dog walkers and fishermen out in Franklin Farm Meadow. But someone else, too. A woman with a camera stood by the pond and aimed her lens at the sky.

I followed her glance upward, and saw the clouds and contrails mingle in the afterglow. The sky continued to redden as I made my way home. By the time I reached Folkstone, it was a radiant pink. Not unlike the maple leaves that are almost, not quite, at their peak.

Forest Fire

Forest Fire

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In summer the forest is dark and cool; ferns stir slightly, like ancient fans, and the ripple of a distant spring promises relief from the sizzling pavement.

In winter and spring the woods are open and bare but still not what you would call bright. The trees are pale sentinels and what greenery there is keeps its head to the ground.

But in autumn —ah, in autumn — the woods are all lit up from the inside, and entering them feels like walking into a party that has been going on for some time. The forest makes its own light this time of year. Each tree is an engine; the leaves are its fire.

Walking in the woods on a bright afternoon, the light is all around me. I don’t want to let it go.

Midway

Midway

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Midway through October, gold outweighs green, leaves sift slowly earthward through the canopy.

Walnuts drop beside the road, their pungent green shell eroding, revealing the hard black fruit inside.

Leaves are falling but have not yet become the enemy. That will happen soon.

Until then, I see not the perils of fall — but the poetry.

Autumn Consolations

Autumn Consolations

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The rains have come and the clouds too, and together they have taken us to a new season. We wake to chill and enter the day in darkness.

In the evening, errands once run in warm dusks are now undertaken in cold nights.

The signs have all been there, I tell myself, but I’ve ignored them. I have chosen to believe (as hot seasons always make me do) that summer is eternal.

And nothing, not the bluest autumn sky or the crispest scarlet leaf, can make it right again.

What consoles me: lamplit evenings, bowls of chili, no yard work, fires on the hearth, low sunlight slanting through tall windows, the knowledge that months pass quickly and soon it will be spring again.

30 Days

30 Days

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And so we come to the end of September. Evenings are chilly; birds are still. The equinox has come and gone. Warmth is no longer something to be feared but something to be coaxed and welcomed. We start at brisk and work our way to warm. Only at the end of a golden, blue-sky afternoon are we there: a perfect, spun-gold, fall day.

Thirty days hath September.

Is there no way to wrangle a few more?

Autumnal Equinox

Autumnal Equinox

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I checked my email and learned from the Writers Almanac that the autumnal equinox occurs today at 10:49 a.m.  — only to glance at my computer clock and see … 10:49 a.m.

We are perfectly poised now between sunlight and shadow, between darkness and light, our days and nights equal halves of the same whole, like the beginning and end of a beloved book, each part integral to what we love, ultimately, for its completeness.

I write outside, a brisk wind blowing. As I type, a single leaf floats down and lands on my keyboard.

Bittersweet

Bittersweet

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Labor Day is a bittersweet holiday. While other nations celebrate their workers on the first day of May, we do it on the first Monday of September.  So instead of welcoming the warm weather, we are saying goodbye to it (or good riddance, depending upon your point of view and tolerance level).

The fact is, if you love summer, as I do, you may not be a big fan of Labor Day. It always makes me think of the last jump in the pool when I was a kid, my parents saying, “OK. But this is absolutely the last one. We have to go home. You have school in the morning.”

School in the morning. A line guaranteed to chill the soul of any child, a phrase that still, decades later, makes my stomach do a little somersault.

As the years pass more quickly, though, and as each Labor Day (and Memorial Day, 4th of July and other holiday) leads more surely to the next fete in the lineup, I’ve come to see the first Monday in September as a bellwether in reverse. If summer is good, Labor Day is not so bad. If summer has been summer — hot, sticky, filled with enough swimming and biking and eating of ice cream bars — then I reluctantly, but without reservation, say farewell.

Dry Season

Dry Season

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We live in a part of Fairfax County laced with runs and rills. Last fall, torrential rains swelled these small streams into wide rivers that spilled across our narrow lanes, taking tree limbs and other debris with them.

You wouldn’t know that now. Most creek beds are bone dry; the deepest are only a trickle of their former selves. This is not good news for the water table, but it is a boon for the walker.

Routes without bridges, paths that lead to narrow log crossings (or none at all) are now open for business. For the last two weeks I’ve been walking trails I hadn’t walked since 2007, when, in an attempt to ford a stream, I pulled myself up with what turned out to be poison ivy vines. (I somehow grew up without knowing that the second half of the rhyme “leaves of three, let them be” is “only a dope would touch a hairy rope.”)

But this summer I can easily cross that stream on a concrete spillway that is usually under several feet of water. And this opens up an entire network of trails through woods and along country lanes. 

 The dry season reveals worlds that are invisible under high water.

Meadow Music

Meadow Music

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A walk through the meadow. I pull out my earphones to hear the rustle of grasses in the wind, the sound of children playing, a ball bouncing. Past the pond, where a family fishes. The mother is veiled, the little boy intent upon his lure.

Along the ribbon of pavement that bisects a field, I breathe in the scent of pine and cut grass. The Queen Anne’s lace is nodding, the tall weeds waving. Insects buzz, the backdrop noise of summer.

But soon enough, I dart into the woods. There was a place there where I had to duck under a tree that had collapsed upon itself in the storm. But only a bare patch remains. Already I smell autumn in the air, the acrid aroma of dry leaves. I shiver as I stride.

Longest Day

Longest Day

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Tom and Celia head to Montana today, which means their longest day will be even longer. And which means that last night was the last time in a long time that we’ll all be together.

We sat on the deck until well past 10, picking at what was left of the quiche I made for dinner, lighting candles, discussing everything from ESPN to circular time. At one point we stopped talking to check on Copper, who was tangling with some wild creature (a fox?) in the back of our yard. Our little dog can always be counted on for comic relief.

Eventually the conversation came around to Africa, to the trips we’ll make there and what we’ll do when we arrive. It was a good topic on which to land. It is the optimistic approach, the sunny approach, what you think about on the longest day.