There’s beauty and then, there’s beauty

One year ago today, our front yard was snow covered, and not just a dusting. The past couple of nights we’ve been bringing in the hanging baskets and covering the potted plants by the front steps. Here in the North Country, our weather seems to be getting more volatile, not that it was ever that dependable. The lesson to be taken: pay attention to what’s going on at the moment because it may change at any time. (Maybe that’s why and how our sports’ fans manage to keep coming back for more: anticipation of a change for the better?)

October 23, 2020 snow cover

Photo by J. Harrington

After looking at some past years’ photos, I’m estimating that this year’s leaf color development has been running about ten days to two weeks behind recent years, but don’t plan on running any sort of numerical analysis on our unscientific, limited, statistically insignificant data set. Instead, during the past few days we’ve been joyfully experiencing the quality and beauty of late October afternoon sunlight on the golden and chrome yellow leaves of the birch and aspen trees.

is this pond covered with ice?

Photo by J. Harrington

Returning to a “pay attention” theme, a quick glance at the woodline next to harvested farm fields rarely, if ever, captures the detail of each leaf on a branch trembling in the mildest of breezes, making a tree’s crown look like it’s covered in gossamer-thin gold-leaf foil. We’ve not been able to convince ourselves that the pond up the road was ice-covered by this time last year, but neither have we convinced ourselves that it wasn’t. We’ll leave it up to you to make that call. We’re going to settle for remembering that  we much prefer autumn’s gold to winter’s silver, even as described by Mr. Frost.

Birches

By Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows—

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig’s having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

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