Christmas in July… in November

"Scenes emerge from the graying landscape with a sudden breathtaking vividness, only to fade quickly away minutes later, as the daylight dulls and the sky continues to darken."

By Patrick J. Walsh

In the park, it gets dark early now, and the darkness brings an early end to the day.

That small part of the park that has been developed for casual recreational use, carved out of the much larger portion of the 1,538 acres that constitute the total site, is open each day only from eight in the morning to “dusk” — that amorphous shadow hour that moves like the mist through the trees after a storm, as time moves from one season to the next.

In these initial days of the early darkness, there is an unsettling disorientation that disrupts the usual narrative of a walk in the park. Scenes emerge from the graying landscape with a sudden breathtaking vividness, only to fade quickly away minutes later, as the daylight dulls and the sky continues to darken.

© Patrick J. Walsh

Stubbornly holding on to its color, it is a tree out of time...

There is an urgency to my steps. I am thinking forward, anticipating the rapidly approaching Advent season, and the Christmas holiday.

In the sky, the sun is drawing in its light and thinning the warmth of its embrace. I feel the chill of the evening as I make my way along an uneven path in the woods near the side of the road. The ground beneath me is pitted and trenched by the recent rain and snow.

There is a wrenching sadness to the sight of the day’s withdrawal across the horizon, amplified to a nearly unbearable intensity by the heartbreaking beauty of the sight.

The scene is somehow like Christmas in July — oddly askew in this time and place, and yet so familiar and so heartening as to be welcome in even the strangest circumstances.

In the pond, something is stirring in the weeds near the water’s edge. The gangly frame, two thin sticks supporting a puffy ball of feathers, is crowned with another skinny branch that suddenly moves in a half revolution to reveal a long beak and a squeamish eye straining to make out my approaching form in the gathering twilight.

It is the heron, that rare bird, a magnificent sight so seldom encountered when the park is busy with people and their celebrations, when the sunlight stretches into the evening. There is little to distract him now, in the lateness of the day.

With camera in hand, I approach as though I am merely passing by heedless of his presence. I casually begin to snap a series of photos as I wend my way ever so slightly toward him; but he is too smart for my trick. Wary and seeming modestly affronted by my interest, he draws himself up out of the water and glides off toward the opposite side of the lake.

The darkness gathers as the shorter days of winter bring the night early, and as a result of the impact of the annual ritual of setting the clock back an hour to accommodate the shift from Daylight Savings Time to standard time.

As I walk, I am thinking of the time, as the daylight fades.

Standard time first became standard in 1883, as a means of coordinating rail travel. Prior to that time, railroads in various parts of the country utilized different time standards — thus trains in New York, for example, operated on New York time, while the Pennsylvania Railroad calculated the arrival and departure of its trains according to Philadelphia time, which differed from New York time.

As rail travel expanded, the need for a uniform method of setting times for train schedules led to the evolution of standard time and the four North American time zones that are now well established.

In the park, as I walk along the paved road, I am thinking about the ways in which the time and trains of the suburbs translate into the effects of seasons and automobiles in the woods — where the trees pass the seasons like humans pass the hours, and where the plants and animals and birds fend off the effects of human activity, epitomized by the exhaust and heat and noise of the cars passing by on the nearby road.

At one point during my walk, I wander some distance into the woods. In the woodlands’ interior, as I make my way up a formidable grade, there is at the edge of the path a remarkable sight: a small tree still wearing its leaves, resplendent in multiple shades of orange.

Stubbornly holding on to its color long after its taller, tougher neighbors have gone gray, it is a tree out of time, still lingering in Autumn even after the first snow has come and gone.

I want to linger for more than a moment in the company of the colorful little tree, but there is not enough daylight left to loiter in the woods. Even as I make my way back toward the paved road, however, I am smiling at the thought of the bright display of leaves hidden just minutes away from my usual route through the park.

Minutes later, driving slowly toward the exit as I peer out into the gathering darkness over the bright beams of my car’s headlights, I am grateful for the colorful tree and the heron and the last vestige of sunlight on the far horizon — and even for the gloomy twilight whose early arrival so emphatically delineates their essence.

In the first days of the darkness come early, before there is time enough to adjust to the austere discipline of the truncated days of winter, there are still moments left for the appreciation of the transcendent elegance of nature, as she moves heedless of time, from one season to the next.

© Patrick J. Walsh

The Walk in the Park series:

• Another New Winter

• The Calm After

• The Halloween Tree

• At the Table by the Tree

• The Green Among the Gray

• The Family by the Rock

• Soliloquy in Gray

• A Greeting of Flowers

• Trails in the Woods

• The Men

• The Hawk

• The First Warm Day of Spring

• Encounter in Autumn

• A Walk Beneath the Dripline

• A Walk in the Park

Another New Winter

“Winter arrives in light airy flakes billowed by the wind, or in thrilling messy clumps of wet snow, trailing out of the sky like wintry fireworks.”

By Patrick J. Walsh

“Mother Nature is weird.”

I’m pretty sure that’s the likely verdict I’d hear if I were to bring up the subject of the changing seasons with my friend who is twelve (soon to be thirteen).

And given the sequence of weather events in this area in recent days, with a frightful hurricane followed by an unexpectedly strong snowstorm, I am inclined to agree.

Like most really smart young people, my friend has a way of reducing very large problems to a series of simple declarative statements.

It’s an ability that I think may well become the basis for a whole new approach to dealing with the interdependent destinies of human beings and the natural world, as the next generation gradually takes the place of those of us who currently ponder those kinds of questions.

© Patrick J. Walsh

I scan the patches of white on the dull gray grass where, 

just a few weeks ago, summer green seemed to be still growing...

 As I took my first look at the trees and fields of the park today, in the wake of yesterday’s first snow of the winter season, I could not help but recall the way the change of seasons felt when I was a child. 

Back then, I took note of every sign of the coming winter: the chill in the evening, the falling leaves, the bare branches, the cold rain, and, finally, the arrival of the first precipitation of the winter — in light airy flakes billowed by the wind, or, like yesterday’s storm, in thrilling messy clumps of wet snow, trailing out of the sky like wintry fireworks.

For most of the years in which I have been around to experience it, the change from Autumn to winter has been remarkably consistent. While it is sometimes punctuated by some horror show of a hurricane, the actual transition from season to season is usually marked by all of the familiar signs.

Which of course makes it all the more fascinating to think about how so many of those who live in this part of the country simply ignore the markers along the way, until nature delivers a deliberate flourish like yesterday’s snowstorm, that we have no choice but to acknowledge.

So I scan the patches of white on the dull gray grass where, just a few weeks ago, summer green seemed to be still growing; and I cast a mournful glance toward the brown leaves that just days ago thrilled the soul with their bright colors. I feel tired, and cold.

In this frame of mind, it is not difficult to imagine the smudges of melting snow, spread across the fields and threaded between the trees, as some careless trail of broken egg shell, loosed upon a landscape not quite ready for the change, in some weird masquerade of birth in reverse.

I shiver, and inwardly complain about the cold and the prospect of long slogs on snowy afternoons and walks cut short by early sunsets, forgetting for the moment the long months of subtle signs that have, as always, brought me to this moment of first encounter with another new winter.

Trudging along the paved road, feeling strangely distant from the knoll just yards away, I am momentarily heedless of the majesty of nature, as it keeps its promise from season to season.

It is only hours later that I finally reconcile myself to the arrival of this new winter. And with that, I cannot help but chuckle at the thought that perhaps Mother Nature isn’t the only one who’s weird, after all.

© Patrick J. Walsh

The Walk in the Park series:

• The Calm After

• The Halloween Tree

• At the Table by the Tree

• The Green Among the Gray

• The Family by the Rock

• Soliloquy in Gray

• A Greeting of Flowers

• Trails in the Woods

• The Men

• The Hawk

• The First Warm Day of Spring

• Encounter in Autumn

• A Walk Beneath the Dripline

• A Walk in the Park

A Walk in the Park: The Men

"...they gather careful and quiet around the open grill, 

meticulously ensuring that no flame goes unminded..."

By Patrick J. Walsh

Many families happily occupy the park during the seasons of warm weather and bright light. On weekends there are small groups gathered at picnic tables, the elder and middle aged members of the family engaged in conversation, the younger adults trailing along after the littlest ones, who prefer to play on the swings or the slide, or to toss a ball, or to simply run around.

Sometimes there are volleyball nets and loosely formed teams playing for fun; and on occasion there are goals delineated by plastic trash cans or bright orange traffic cones, and small groups of friends kicking a soccer ball.

In the late Spring and throughout the long days of summer, it is not uncommon to see a decorative tablecloth fixed to the surface of one of the wooden tables with the string end of a group of lighter-than-air balloons, together proclaiming the celebration of a birthday or similar milestone event.

photo © Patrick J. Walsh

They populate silent prayers in the chill wind...

Family Gatherings

And all around these human manifestations of family life, there are other gatherings. At about the same time each year that the first cake and presents appear in the picnic area, the first goslings totter out onto the open grass near the pond. Bedecked in the grayish yellow down that softens the first few months of their existence, the tiny geese present a comic living tableau of life in the bird world. Their dark beaks seemingly too big for their tiny heads, their webbed feet seeming only loosely attached at the end of their spindly legs, they follow along as the adult members of the family excavate the edge of the pond for food, or move into the water itself.

In the woods nearby, meanwhile, there are hollows in the earth where rabbits raise their young. The tiny ones just begun on their journey into the world, not yet grown into their cartoonish oversized ears, depend on the keen curious explorations of their parents to provide sustenance and to protect them from danger.

There are families everywhere in the park: the fox with her kits, the gray flash of squirrels scurrying across the leaves in the woods; the spawn of fish and frogs in and around the water, the inexhaustible supply of buzzing, humming, droning insects in all corners. And above, in the branches, nests are alive with the heedless haranguing of twittering baby birds, hungry to be fed.

Throughout the seasons, the family life of the park is augmented by a carnivalesque array of other individuals and groups. There are small gatherings of youngsters hanging out at the edge of the parking lot, couples strolling hand-in-hand along the road, cyclists of astounding athleticism making their way through the trails in the woods, and the occasional hiker dreamily walking along from one area to the next, seeming lost in his thoughts.

The Men

And there are the men. There are not many of them; they gather in small numbers, often huddled together as though to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. In summer they are nearly invisible, collecting in the remotest parts of the park. They are there early, and late. Sometimes there is some marker of their day’s work, in a shopping cart half-filled with cans destined for redemption for the small amount of change they will bring. Sometimes there is the smoky aroma of fish frying on one of the open grills that are a fixture throughout the wide picnic area.

The men are there, even when they are not physically in the park. They populate silent prayers in the chill wind of wintry afternoons, giving rise to thoughts of the admonition of Moses (in the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy) about how ‘the poor will be always with you’:

“For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.”

Silently, from afar, the men haunt the mirror images of the families who gather for the brief happy celebrations of summer. In the first warm days of Spring, they return, thinner, grayer, even more ill-defined in character and form, having been faded by the worst days and nights of winter.

And as the Fall approaches, they gather careful and quiet around the open grill, meticulously ensuring that no flame goes unminded amid the treasure of richly colored Autumn leaves, brittle and dry, that are spread randomly across the hardened ground.

© Patrick J. Walsh

The Walk in the Park series:

• The Hawk

• The First Warm Day of Spring

• Encounter in Autumn

• A Walk Beneath the Dripline

• A Walk in the Park