Deciduous

Japanese maple resembles tiny artistic paper cut-outs.

• Flowers are sublime in April, especially if it is cool so that daffodils, forsythia, and tulips can linger.  Only memories of crocuses remain, but grass awakens.  Yet for all that beautiful and striking activity, it is deciduous trees such as maple, oak, hickory, and beech that steal the show. 
• Some trees perform full acts.  Magnolia hogs any scene, except perhaps where mature cherry blossoms briefly filter clouds.  Dogwood and crabapple creep forth, sometimes bursting out in the right warm microclimate.  Gigantic tulip trees will soon sport blossoms that are rarely seen from below.

Sprightly baby dogwood leaves are delicious light green.

• Have any child crayon winter and summer pictures, and you will demonstrate our innate understanding.  Winter trees are brown lines, summer’s are lush green lollipops.  Professional photographers and painters realize that identical vistas become entirely different.  What was once exposed is hidden, what had been a jagged horizon becomes nearly smooth.  It is often difficult to recognize the same place in pictures taken at different seasons.

 Uncurling lilac leaves can appear almost menacing

• Trees provide our most important spring metaphors.  Apparently visibly dead for months, they suddenly burst out in frantic activity and remake themselves into the very picture of life.  Except, of course, for the ones that do not, which is yet another important lesson.  Everyone at one time or another hopes to be like a tree that comes back from adversity, or like a tree that can sway in the frantic vernal wind without breaking, or like an ancient but mighty oak grown from a small acorn, or simply like a reliable companion which proves that _ appearances to the contrary _ it is not over yet.
• Once leafed out , trees are exposed to danger.  A late snowstorm can break branches, as can the excessively strong winds of passing weather fronts.  That demonstrates how deceptively strong deciduous trees can be.  We have viewed their apparently fragile skeletons for months, and are surprised that such thin frameworks support an immense waving weight.  But if we think about it, much of our construction, our houses, our furniture depend on relatively light, strong. tough wood.

Linear sentinels in winter begin to soften with vernal promise.

• I once read that there was a measurable change in global atmospheric oxygen level when the great deciduous forests of the northern landmasses leaf out in spring.  I’m too lazy to verify it, but it sounds nice and might be true.  Certainly on a local level these trees cut pollution, remove irritants, provide welcome shade in summer, and are generally fine things to have about.
• I could never dismiss beautiful flowers on evergreen azaleas, rhododendrons, privet, and hollies.  I would not ignore the spectacular blooms on forsythias and roses.  Conifers present swaths of grace all year long.  But the miraculous  transformation of groves of deciduous trees around Huntington in this season is a truly wondrous spectacle that I too often take for granted.

Humpty Dumpty

With few cars, boats, planes air almost as crystalline as 400 years ago

• As the pandemic drags on, everyone shrieks “what next?”  Has the world changed forever?  Can Humpty Dumpty be repaired?  Is the modern industrial cornucopia destroyed leading us into a dark age of want?   Anxiety crests not merely because of terrible predictions, but also since all outcomes appear equally probable.  Dare we have hope?
• The word “dire” has become a pandemic in its own right among talking heads and instant experts.  Truly “dire” outcomes have so far, fortunately, remained fictions.  The hospital system has not collapsed, people are not dropping dead in the streets, whole towns and industries are not being buried daily.   The shape of this disease is not that of world apocalypse.
• I suspect that we may look back on this moment as the birth of reoriented individual philosophy,  just as the Victorian Belle Epoque was shattered by WWI and the Roaring Twenties collapsed with the stock market.  Those events in themselves were bad enough, but what genuinely changed forever were attitudes.  After 1917 nobody believed that the march of progress and enlightenment was inevitable; after 1929 the dream that everyone would become millionaires through stocks lay in ashes.

No roses to smell yet, but April a fine time to admire flowers anyway

• Messianic experts (of which I am not one) predict that future society will change in unimaginable ways.  Perhaps equality will reign, health care will rationalize, folks will nurture families, individuals will remold into sanity.  The lion will lie down with the lamb, manna will fall from heaven.  Me, no.  I suspect it will be much like rebuilding after a (minor) earthquake.  Rubble cleared, a few vistas completely new, much reconstructed to same appearance but with new inner structure.
• Experts also intone that we flounder in the spreading mess of a broken egg that cannot be reconstructed.  Global trade, international travel, personal freedom are all about to vanish with the snows of yesteryear.  Me, no.  I think we merely accelerate the trends that were already clear: brick and mortar retail will reorient to entertainment and sales, for example.  Perhaps metered, paid, accountable work from home (as opposed the previous frenzy of unpaid work from home) will become more common.  I point out that, so far, populations have not been decimated, few people scarred forever.
• In the meantime, a month or so in the worst hit areas has been like life in an offseason vacation resort rather than horrible end of world.  Yes, many old people have died, but still a relatively small percentage of elder population, an almost unnoticeable part of the work force and youth.  Inconvenience and financial worry have affected just about everybody, but there is still strong belief that normalcy will return sometime soon.

Unknowable if summer will be lonelier than usual on bays and at beaches or stores.

• In fact, many supposed society-wide cultural changes are little different than those constantly occurring for all individuals as life events happen.  Getting married or divorced, losing or gaining a job, moving out or in, having a child, changing a career, medical emergencies, and so forth are all desperate times for anyone to go through.  Anyone deals with stuff like that periodically.  We are adaptable creatures.
• Ordinary life has an inertia that is hard to change, and which is very tough.   A few days or even a month of change is not too hard to accept.  We relax, freed from routine and let cares and daily worries subside for a while (although these are soon replaced by others.)  But after a while we itch to “get back in the groove” or “get on with it.”  And, in most cases, within a short while we do in fact pick up exactly where we left off.  Perhaps this massive shut down is different.  A lot of stores and restaurants, for example, will never return.  But most of those were in difficult straits already _ we should not forget how often similar establishments turn over in the best of times.
• Perhaps real changes will be subtle and only take effect over time.  People may resist taking on jobs, for example, that require frequent short trips when meetings can be done electronically.  Patterns of eating may shift to less fad and more comfort.  Even the “ultimate” goals of life may be reevaluated and result in new combinations of drive and purpose.  But few of these will occur in a flash of immediate enlightenment.

Unrolling ferns are comic releaf amidst decaying detritus of autumn

• In this particular pandemic none of the physical plant has been destroyed.  Oh, transportation networks have been disrupted, some strongly and possibly forever.  Certain stores and restaurants will never return as they were.  But the airports and airplanes and ports and boats and roads and railways still exist.  Buildings remain strong and usable.  Even the subtle inter-weavings of supply chains are available in slightly different form.  It is not like a war zone, nor even a hurricane.  On the other hand, that was also true in 2008 and 1929.
• Fortunately for Northern Hemisphere psyches, the worst seems to have happened at the end of winter.  Spring should provide some optimistic rays of hope.  Maybe not the worst of times, nor the best of times, but just the normal let’s adapt to whatever happens times.  Like always.

Tidal Flats

 Low tide at our neighborhood dock

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• Living along a sheltered tidal bay provides opportunities to view multiple worlds.  The interface between earth and water in such a place is quite different, daily, than is the case with rivers, streams, or ponds.  Those may overflow once in a while, but here we have tides that require docks to be raised many feet, often ridiculously above sea level, other times all but submerged.  And, along the shoreline of Long Island, are “flats” composed of mud and sand.
• Mudflats and sandbars may be wide or slim, full of grass (in summer) or filled with brown stubble, smooth or punctuated with rocks.  Fiddler crabs scurry about in warmer months, horseshow crabs dig hollows to lay eggs, clams squirt jets of water as one walks about, preferably barefoot.  Usually there are bird tracks, often overlaid with those of dogs and children.  Bits of flotsam and jetsam (look up the difference!) mark the high tide lines.  Where currents are right, moon and whelk shells pile up among those of oysters and clams, occasional dogfish eggs.  And, certainly, seaweed. 
• Ducks and swans and geese and egrets and (in season) terns and cormorants float or stalk or dive as minnows breed in shallow water, and clams or periwinkles are exposed when water recedes.  Low tide provides spectacles of flocks either sitting around or playing nearly incomprehensible avian games.  Gulls float above it all, an occasional osprey cruises overhead carrying a fish back to its nest.  Varied hawks may wander over the bay far from their usual haunts in warm meadow updrafts, ignored by those below.

 Green shoots relentlessly slice through old growth and seaweed.

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  Right now, early spring, the flats awaken.  Green shoots spike through broken brown stalks.  Huge mud rafts reestablish root connections with foundational sand.  Sadly, I note they are diminished each year as water levels rise.  The floating detritus of decayed reeds form thick piles dictated by hidden currents _ exposed above the tideline they swarm with newly hatched insects.
• The vast scene illustrates a symphony of transition.  Before the ice ages, none of this existed.  After the great melt, it will all be gone once again.  The ecology has undergone massive changes as people ruined a natural paradise seeking to make it more to their liking.  No more lobsters, hardly any oysters, seals and dolphins departed, birds scarce.  It remains incredibly beautiful, in spite of human forms forced on it by those wishing to live along the shore.

A miniature example of braided river deltas everywhere formed by underground stream.

• At low tide, rivulets wind their way into the distant waves as they form miniature braided Mississippis.  Swans stretch necks to lie flat for sips of fresh water.  In places, ancient ditches dug to drain salt flats still channel inflow and out.  My memories recall playing with our children as we built dams and sent flotsam “boats” on a perilous journey out to sea. 
• People go to ocean beaches to scan empty vistas, to watch huge breakers, to swim in surf.  This bay is far more casual, with low wavelets (except in storms) and often more rocks than soft sand.  Mosquitoes can be frequent, an occasional greenhead fly painful.  There are recreational boats of all types _sail, yacht, jet ski interspersed with active commercial clam rakes.  Lately paddle boards have become a vehicle of choice.  I find more to see on a bay than on the vast, intimidating, ocean.
• Water scenes calm the soul.  Imagining the infinite and eternal comes naturally.  As it was, so shall it ever be, and I am just a (pick your choice) pebble, wave, bird, or passer-by.  Anthropomorphism reigns _ mighty waves, ceaseless surf, relentless tide and all other elements seem to have purpose and will.  I am humbled by the vast cacophony of sound and sight and smell, and feel.  Carefree as the sun visibly crawls its arc.  

 I’m not a photographer, so this fuzzy moon is all I could get.

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  Tidal lands never ignore the moon.  They are never exactly in synch _ tides are insanely complex to predict _ but they are partners.  Seasonal moon variations affect height in spring and fall, phases are always an indicator of when there may be floods.  Sea life, of course, is fully attuned to these rhythms which determine many mating cycles.
• Spring on Huntington tidal flats is a wonderful time.  Life is springing up anew, although often in subtle ways.  Migrant birds return as overwintered residents frisk about.  People often remain indoors because of chill winds, so a sense of solitude can still emanate from empty expanses.  Not least, the bustle and worries of a difficult social world can be _ for a little while _ left behind and ignored.

Rambles

Sometimes a good ramble includes brambles.

• There is an old New Orleans funeral song (I like the George Lewis version): “Didn’t he ramble/he ramble/he rambled all around/in and out of town./Didn’t he ramble/he ramble/ he rambled ‘til the butcher cut him down.”  It is bright and cheerful and incorporates an attitude to life that I think is all too rare today.  Maybe it would be good for us to do a bit more rambling, a bit less logical pursuit of imagined goals.
• Of course, such an attitude is heresy in an era of “purpose-driven” meaningful lives.  People are constantly told that to be happy they must have an easily-encapsulated moral philosophy _ almost a sloganized motto_ of what they should do.  Each moment should be devoted to whatever shiny objective they have chosen to add the luster of pride to their dreary little lives.  Media is filled with puritanical admonitions to live frugally in hope of future glory.
• A ramble, by definition, has no destination.  It is valued for itself.  It glories in unexpected enrichment as a person strolls undirected over woods, meadows, beaches, roads, city sidewalks, ugly terrain, or wherever a path may be available.  Variety is certain.  The mind is as free as the body, and comes up with unique ideas to match strange perspectives.  At the end nothing much has been accomplished, and there is no shiny trophy commemorating a task well done.  Rewards of a good ramble are entirely self-contained and as transitory as the next breeze.

Rambles can happen inside the house or out in a yard.

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  Now, I am not saying it is not good to do something constructive sometimes.  There are periods of life that require intense single-minded concentration on a task.  Rambling all the time is just as corrosive as constantly striding heedless towards some destination.  Each phase of life is rewarding, in its own way, and is part of how we have a fully experienced existence.  Sure, spend some time thinking of nothing but that project that you think needs to be done.  But, as the saying used to go, smell the roses along the way _ sometimes stop working on the project and wander around the garden doing nothing.   There are an awful lot of moments in a lifetime, they can be spread into a grand profusion of activities.
• Civilization now provides infinite resources of knowledge, possibilities, and challenges.  To cope with ever-more-detailed specializations, society has raised crops of pointy-headed experts.  Each of these has a myopic view of the universe that they encourage us to follow.  And, to be honest, the most lucky and driven of those creatures often become rich and famous.  But from any perspective other than their own, much of what they advise is counterproductive to a rich and full life. 
• How would your funeral sound?  Would they play “didn’t he ramble?” and mean it?  Would you prefer weeping, or a long obituary in a prominent journal?  Maybe a mix.  I usually don’t waste much time thinking about life after me _ other folk’s problem.  I certainly never try to imagine looking back from a casket.  But I would like to think that, at least, there would be few regrets.  Those would include not having taken advantage of this miracle world that was offered, not simply strolled about and been grateful.

Woods always engage my imagination in unusual ways.

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  Society demands we not think that way.  Society is an ant heap.  Use up soldiers, drive the workers, keep the queen safe.  An individual is essentially unimportant and fully replaceable.   What any given ant thinks does not matter at all.  I am not, I do not want to be, such an ant.  At least not all the time.  I spent my ant years commuting and in a career, but even then I broke out whenever possible.  We are richly endowed to be much more than ants in our own noggin.  Do not put a lot of faith for your own personal salvation in the needs of the anthill.
• Let us never forget that a good ramble always includes legs in motion.  It is not virtual viewing on a computer simulation.  It is not reading a book.  It is not even pursuit of a hobby.  It is, from external perspectives, “wasted time.”  But that wasted time must include using the body, moving along sidewalks or over hills, looking actively at whatever comes into view, listening to the environment, and letting the brain roam as unchained as the feet.
• Rambles provide a good anchor for celebration in our very weird universe.  We are fated not to understand everything, and that is ok.  We are mortal, and we adjust to that grim ending.  But we need not listen to experts, work an ant’s routine, nor mutate into potatoes on a couch.  A ramble is a cure for almost everything, and (as an expert) I advise it whole-heartedly.