Indian Summer

Mon-

Almost overnight, the reeds have packed up and fled until next year, leaving behind only bare stalks and surprisingly resilient fluffy white seed heads that will hang around until the new growth.  Summer is officially over, even for those who have failed to pick up on the warning signs.  The nights are chill, the north winds are becoming harsh, and each ever colder rainstorm is a foretaste of the snows arriving soon.

People who live in this climate _ me among them _ generally welcome the onset of new seasons.  We claim it is the privilege of living here.  (Of course, those who live in different areas have different reasons for celebration _ the onset of the monsoons, for example.)  What we sometimes have trouble with is the length of some of them _ winter always outwaits its welcome, and sometimes spring even lingers a bit too long.  Nobody, however, is hoping that autumn will disappear any time in the near future.
Tue-

Bittersweet is somewhat invasive, but picturesque most of the year and especially beautiful with bright orange berries in intricate forms as we anticipate the first frosts.  Joan used to have me gather a bunch of it to decorate the house around Thanksgiving, as her mom used to do, but these days the tradition has ended. Killed, like so many others, by affluence.

It is much easier to buy plastic leaves and wreaths and various light-up marvels to decorate than to walk the woods and possibly scratch your hands.  For months, stores have been offering faux-nostalgic wares remembering holidays of old.  And, perhaps, that is all to the good.  Leave these fine berries and anything else out in the open for the appreciation of others and the use of the ecology of which they are a part.
Wed -

Puppy cove, with about as much color as there will be along the waterfront.  After the cold front comes through in a few days, leaves will be various subtle shades of browns, not red nor yellow nor orange.  Then they will be stripped by gales from Connecticut.  Still, peak color for the local microclimate.

The rest of the area is magnificent.  Joan and I took a ride yesterday viewing foliage as fine as any in New Hampshire or upstate.  Long Island, for all its overpopulation, can be astonishing in how much beauty lies everywhere.  Everywhere just glows like some enchanted storybook watercolor illustration.
Thu-

First of the obligatory Halloween cemetery shots.  These rusting steel gravestones in Huntington Historic Cemetery date from the Civil War Era.  The well-nourished trees on this hill provide some of the best colors in town, and from the top you can get views of what around here passes for expansive vistas of foliage in the distance.

I like being reminded periodically of mortality.  Especially when you are older, each day of life and health is a gift, and we forget that fact only at our peril.  I admit that even when younger, I would often stroll through such places, to keep a perspective on ambition and failure.  No matter what, everyone ends up in the same situation.
Fri-

From the top of the hill with the old maple tree _ I’m not enough of an expert to tell if it is a sugar maple, but it seems brilliant enough.  The stones here go back to the early seventeen hundreds, although most that old are almost too weathered to read. 

For a while this ground was totally neglected, but lately the town has realized what a historic resource it is and there is a significant effort to clean it up.  There are even seasonal tours and I would not be surprised if some of them were at night around now.  The beer cans and periodic vandalism have finally stopped.  I think it is good for anyone’s psyche to always have a graveyard within walking distance _ kind of like the ancient Roman slave who kept whispering “remember you are only mortal” in the ears of a conqueror on parade.

Sat-

Our own front yard shows as fine a pattern of autumn splendor as there is anywhere, the Japanese maples getting progressively more brilliant and clear red, while the hickories turn fully gold.  This weekend the rain and winds will rip through, and all the finery will lie darkening on the ground, waiting for me to get out and sweep them all up.  Some colors, some leaves will remain for quite a while, but from here on it’s all a ragged show, like a beggar wearing a once fine set of clothing.

Meanwhile, other beggars in all their current finery were ready to go out candy hunting.  Halloween has become another huge holiday like Super Bowl Sunday, almost from nowhere.  I think it is because nobody is being urged to contemplate “the real spirit of Halloween” as is constantly blathered at the more traditional ones.  That and the fact that those are both purely peer holidays _ no extended family to please, no ghosts from the past to be compared _ makes it an attractively meaningless festival.
Sun-

Goldenrod completely gone to seed and fluffy seed carriers.  The far shore fully decorated with autumnal colors.  A fair amount of boats still remain in the water, their owners hopeful that there will be a number of good days ahead, but even they are thinning quickly, as the boatyards constantly haul them up for winterizing and storage. 

I tend to get too easily ahead of myself.  One snowflake does not a winter make.  A single cold blustery morning is not the onset of full harsh weather.  It’s always been a problem, this looking too far ahead, this worry about the future when the present is fully around.  Time to just take a deep breath, stand still for a while, and truly immerse myself in the moment.

  

 

 

 

  

Wind, Rain, Leaves

Thu-

Our northeaster is beginning to pass on, with more cold in its wake.  Any time now we can anticipate Indian Summer, then the final chill down.  These dogwood leaves hardly notice the rain, they just lose their chlorophyll and reveal their true colors.

A cynic would say that is just like an American election these days _ as soon as the storm passes on and the results are in, the coldness returns.  Politicians lose whatever camouflage they were displaying to get votes and return to their true color before drying up and uselessly dropping to the low ground.  But, naturally, I follow nature and am not permitted to be a cynic.

Fri-

What look like elf weapons hanging from the sweet gum tree in front of Coindre Hall.  These handsome leaves are moving right along with everything else.  Today the wind has a bite _ I’m wearing a wool cap for the first time _ and there remains an off and on drizzle from the storm out over the Atlantic.

I’m about halfway to getting out the regular fall gear and putting away the things of summer.  The yard, too, is hung between seasons:  the hoses are still out, the leaves don’t need raking but the grass needs a final clip, all the stakes should be pulled out, but the bulbs are in.  Then comes the real changeover, which somehow always coincides with Halloween and the end of daylight savings time.

Sat-

 

Reeds near high tide, with subtly colored trees in puppy cove behind.  Like any other of the many pictures I take, really, yet each photograph is never quite the same.

Each moment is infinitely different from all others, yet each is basically identical.  Each day I am identical to who I was yesterday, yet entirely different.  That is true at a quantum level for everything in the universe, even a rock.  Such contradiction is part of the fabric of which our consciousness is woven.  Miraculously, as humans, we can be aware of each truth simultaneously.
Sun-

Some of the fascination with fall foliage is how its effects can vary from subtle to dramatic.  Flaming orange maples or brilliant scarlet hillsides are the standard calendar book views, but autumn also announces in thinning brightly tinged leaves that almost seem an illusion.  We adjust so easily that after a moment any strangeness is accepted as common, and we go back to looking for something new and different.

Perhaps that is part of our evolutionary heritage, in which we always had to be on the lookout for dangers or food opportunities.  One of the glories of being human is that we include such mechanisms, which is why an artificial intelligence should it ever be possible would not be nearly human _ none of these instinctual and subtle facets of consciousness would be present. 

   

Tipping Point

Mon -

Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes not, from the colors over and around me autumn has reached the tipping point.  No matter how many warm days or intervals we get in the near future, no matter how hot they may be, processes are irremediably set and the leaves will now turn, fall off, and await longer periods of sunlight.  That’s why people who are fond of metaphors worry about things like when such a point of no return would be reached for global warming or social instability.

I admit to being a little too attached to words and logic and metaphors myself, too quick to decide something is like something totally dissimilar.  Language can be great fun, imagination can fly beyond the bounds of reality.  But, of course, nothing is really like anything else.  The processes of autumn are exactly that, the human-caused atmospheric changes something entirely different, and the only reason we are reasonably sure of what will happen next in autumn is because we have been through it before.
Tue-

This is the most dramatic of season changes.  There are moments, like this, where everything is summery calm and idyllic, which stretch for hours or days.  Suddenly there will be a biting wind, a driving rain, a bank of deep purple clouds from the north.  A few days later, warm again.  Such times in spring are not quite so jarring, simply because the calm interludes reveal a landscape that continues to be primarily barren and bleak.  This month, for romantics anyway, is all about loss.

The leaves are truly cascading and swirling.  Around here, they never “come tumbling down in September.”  Later October is the beginning and early November the overwhelming crescendo, when rakes and blowers can scarcely keep up, especially for neighbors who expect their lawn to look like a green living room carpet.  I still like kicking my way through piles of them, reverting to childhood joys.
Wed-

Some of these berries will last through most of the winter.  The expiration date on the leaves arrives much sooner.  Especially along this shoreline, exposed to pure blasts of north wind through the inlet from the Sound, Connecticut, and further westward.  Once again, my imagination runs far ahead of reality, anticipating what will be instead of appreciating what is.

I think ourselves extremely fortunate that our consciousness always weaves in connections throughout time and space and imagination.  The world in any moment is infinitely rich, simply in instantaneous sensations, but the real glory of humanity is the enchanting web of depth that we can cast everywhere, on everything, all the time.  In other words, it is wonderful to add on the knowledge that summer is just past, winter is just to come, and that there are such things as westward winds and the immense lands where they originate.
Thu-

Along the salt water, not many trees deliver the flaming oranges and scarlets you expect in, say, New Hampshire glens.  Instead, it is a masterful blend of subtle yellow and brown hues.  You need to appreciate them in a different way.

As I frequently do, I make an analogy to people.  Some are brilliant and showy, but many of us are simply mellow brown and gold.  Learning to accept what we are, and not wishing to be a sugar maple in the mountains when you are just an oak on the harbor, is part of maturity.

  

 

  

Escalating Reminders

Mon-

Most of our local geese get confused in October.  Their basic genetic pattern and instincts whisper that they should be flying somewhere else.  Their presumably expressed genetic pattern and upbringing tell them to stay put.  Our formerly migrating flocks are homebodies.  But internal pressures force them to do something _ first milling around in groups, then taking off and forming into V-shapes where they fly from one end of the harbor to the other, sometimes to another harbor, never very far, and always returning when the next urge strikes.

We like to believe (still somewhat trapped in our anthropologically-centered universe) that humans are the only beings who have escaped (or perilously ignored) their Paleolithic heritage.  Eat and act like primitive ancestors, claim new gurus.  But all creatures, all life, makes complicated adjustments like that all the time.  We are only now learning exactly how complicated these adjustments are, having little to do with raw genes, basic nurture, nor immediate reflex.  People fit exactly into this complicated dance, just like these geese, usually just as confused about the whole process.
Tue-

Contrast perfectly expresses the mood this week.   A warm day follows a chilly night, clouds may bring misty rain or open to allow shafts of sunlight.  I catch a glimpse of distant solid green through brightly colored leaves, while ignoring the brown falling ones behind me, or the stripped branches on the next tree over.  The only real constant is the northerly wind, and that may be gentle or fierce.  But the trends _ ah, the trends are all too certain.

Every moment is appropriate for reflection, if the demands of life are not too urgent, but knowledge of the seasons often shapes our thoughts.  Spring full of hope, summer relaxation, winter gritty endurance, but autumn is generally satisfaction mixed with sadness.  I want to refuse the temptation and remain excited at constantly changing beauty, but I admit it can be a struggle that becomes more personal with each ache in my joints.    
Wed-

Queen Anne’s Lace is well ahead of the pack, already seeded and gone, none of this last minute hurry-up-and-try-to-beat-the-snow.  Like people, some species procrastinate, some rush, and it all works out into a grand and tightly filled ecology.  Our social mistake is that we sometimes believe that if everybody were alike _ if all the procrastinators would only hurry _ that somehow our society would be better.

I have the same problem, of course.  I hurry along getting ready for the next season well before I need to, although sometimes I put off doing what should be done until a pleasant chore becomes unpleasant _ like cleaning out gutters in a cold drizzle when I could have done it on a lovely warm Indian Summer afternoon.  What I now call wisdom just tells me it’s ok, all that just makes life interesting.

Thu-

Wild Asters are about the last of the blooms, rushing rushing rushing into seed now, as the days grow noticeably shorter.  They carpet the woodland floor here at Coindre Hall, just as lovely and welcome as anything in spring.  Yet they are mostly ignored, because we have all become so used to flowers over the last six months.

I try to pay proper respects, but in truth I am also caught up in the season.  Suddenly there are many yard chores to accomplish, some to simply clean up and some to get ready for spring.  A barrel of big green fragrant hickory nuts must be picked up in the next week,  whatever the squirrels do not plant in the holes they are digging all over the lawn.  Bulbs should be planted.  Weeds taken out of the flower beds.  Gutters!  Wash windows!  And that’s even before the leaves start to fall.  Oh, woe am I _ it is so easy to get frantic and become oblivious to everything else.  That’s why I must pay attention when I am strolling through the woods.

Fri-

 

I’m no great photographer, and I do not have the best equipment, but even so the glow of sun backshining through changing leaves merits a picture.  You’ll have to seek out the details yourself _ after all, that is my core philosophy to begin with.  A picture of the thing is not the thing itself.  A very poor substitute for the experience, in fact.

That’s often an easy truth to forget.  Pictures are such fine definition, multimedia such complete immersion,  that we come to believe we either have experienced something, or that we can only do so by exactly replicating what is before us.  Both are false.  Any moment of our consciousness is infinitely complex, fed by infinitely complex senses and thoughts.  And we can use those moments to expand our appreciation, understanding pictures like these because we try to find similar things nearby.  The totality of those attempts _ by both the person presenting media and the one trying to understand it _ is what I call art.
Sat-

About as nice an autumnal set of colors as Puppy Cove gets, the bright blue waters, browning grasses, and one tree struggling into fashionable shades of orange.  Mostly the trees, protected by the water from normal temperature variations, simply brown up and strip to branches in whatever gales come along.

Those who become truly involved in the natural diversity around them notice things that most of us blindly ignore.  Even in the most dense city, there are now trees changing, weeds going to seed, and of course the unnatural human reminders as mums, Halloween decorations, and (lately) a lot of flowering kale replace the summer blooms in tended flower beds.  But this is also the really busy social time, when work is coming into its peak, family is already concentrating on the holidays ahead, and little home problems like gutters, leaves, and bringing in patio stuff takes time.  For those with children, even more so, since the soccer and football and other final outdoor sports are reaching their full frenzy of weekend games and tournaments.  I’m somewhat glad most of that is behind me, and at least I can enjoy the quiet shoreline with not much else to worry about.

Sun-

Still very much like summer, in some views.  Unless you are really paying attention to the yellowing Ailanthus leaves, you could assume it is July.  That’s why we need not only all our own senses, but also our memory of time and pattern to determine where we are.  Our experience is far more immense and complex than some of the current theoreticians of artificial intelligence and mechanical minds seem to comprehend.

There are really only two goals in robotic “intelligence.”  One is to replace menial human slaves with machines _ and if the machines are to serve as slaves they must never have any consciousness at all.  The other, totally different, aim is to make a longer lasting replacement for our current “wetware.”  That seems Quixotic to me, but on the other hand mechanical prosthesis have been becoming more and more capable each year.  I take some comfort in knowing either of these developments would occur, if at all, long after I would care at all.