One last dram of summer before the Paynes grey November sky moves in; Indian summer, as it's referred to in these parts. The sky is an unreal azure and the fall colors are Kodachrome wow. The temperature is near perfect. One can't help but pause and marvel at how amazing it is. Many have attributed Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay" to the innocence of youth and how fleeting it is, I have always thought it could just as easily be describing the fall colors and Indian summer -
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
This vivid pallet won't stay long at all. It will have vanished by the time we get back from Vieques. I guess something as intense as the colors of Indian Summer can't last very long. If it did we would probably get numb to it's beauty, much as the way Emerson wrote about the night sky:
“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays
So taking Emerson's advice I try, whenever I have the opportunity, to revel in what is this magical journey we all our on. The simplest way to accomplish this most times is to just slow down and look. I was slowing down to admire the highbush cranberry that grows on our property, when I noticed this little guy:
That's a Cope's Grey Treefrog hanging out in the cranberry leaves.
The cranberry leaves turn an almost fluorescent color this time of year. They almost seem to glow in the woods.
The dogwood berries this time of year are of such and intense crimson that they look unreal:
But I digress, this post was suppose to be about the color gold and our property was alit with it's presence.
The above beech was nearly destroyed about 10 years ago when we had a hellish spring storm that broke off a large number of our red oaks and took down the largest tree on our property. This beech was pinned to the ground by a large red oak. I had to take ropes to get it back into it's upright posture. I was able to remove the ropes after a couple years.
Like I already said, this will all be gone by the time we get back from Vieques. I'm glad I had the chance to take it all in.
:-)
