10/23/03
Fred Allebach
East Thetford, VT
Yesterday was the first snow in the Vershire Heights, where
I was working and last evening it snowed a couple of inches here in East
Thetford, close to the Connecticut River. The Fall color peaked less than two
weeks ago, on a brilliant October 11th, after which the sky turned
somber and there was frost, wind and rain and the leaves started to fall like
mad. The last glimpses of summer, the green-leaved trees, fell like sentinels,
one by one in the wind, covered with frost fell the leaves brown, yellow, red,
in long carpets along dirt roads lined with maple. And now by golly, there is
snow! It is 5:45 AM and I wait anxiously for daylight so as to see what the
silent whiteness has wrought. I love it when it snows and yesterday I was
thrilled by the beginnings of a snowy day; it started to stick and I inside
having made a fire in the stove and set up my saw horses, proceeded to work six
hours painting old wavy glass windows that I had pointed and glazed a few days
earlier. The views out of the windows were precious, the silent drama of the
first snow, falling, falling, sticking, making all over in white wonder and
mystery. So many passing views have been precious beyond comparison, a creek
framed by trees, moss and rocks, a tree’s silhouette, a field of corn next to
the river, fog and mist rising…I have tried to photograph some of this, but it
is all just too much. It passes too rapidly and there is no capturing and
owning the fleeting changes of Fall. The majority of it must be appreciated
exactly as it passes, with no recording. A falling leaf cannot be taken,
captured or owned on its brief and fluttering trip to the ground. The sense of
this beauty in passing is the essence of my appreciation of the Fall. It is the
season (a season finally! after 20 years in the desert), and this season is
just my favorite and always has been.
In June, the forest was luxuriant; the canopy lush with
green leaves and warm rain fell as we camped out in our meadow in Merck Forest
in Rupert, VT. Our meadow was full of
flowers and the little pond full of frogs and salamanders and many snakes lived
on the edges soaking in the sun and they slithered away as I would arrive back
to my space. The trails led through the woods to our project, of making a
bridge and we would work all day shaping our timbers and cribbing and then swim
without care in Birch Pond; the children of summer we were. Kim would come to
visit on the weekends and I held her hand beneath a majestic maple and she made
us hobo dinners and I played Shining Star on my guitar.
What was a very nice SCA crew and project came and went,
funny, precious just like the leaves; you can touch the leaves and see their
brilliance, but then they crumble and they are gone, as now that luxuriant
meadow has changed to Fall and then to snow and here I am, alone with my
memories, like jewels embedded in the scene of a precious Vermont day. Those
days so filled with fun and chatter and sweat and hard work, capped off with
huge meals and deep sleep among the crickets and fireflies, those days have
come and gone. The memory lingers like a warm coal now burning in the archives
of my life.
Later in the summer there were signs that the green was no
longer quite as verdant. There are always subtle signs of seasonal change, even
in summer, the first plants go to seed, and the leaves lose the first blush of
green. Yet the ponds and lakes were still warm and Kim and I would swim at the
lake at Eastman, at Indian Pond, the pond near Lyme and bugs would be biting
and there might be barbequed hamburgers and hot dogs in the offing. And then, I
would notice one red leaf in a sea of green, and then maybe one tree changing
amidst the rest of green and slowly, ever so slowly, the dominos lined up until
many colored and changed trees were standing among perfectly green trees. The
change I knew was reaching some sort of mass against the green, as if a wave
enveloping, to eventually cover and include all in the fleeting, ephemeral grip
of Fall. This was about a month ago and the days were still pleasant and we had
not a thought of a fire in the stove. Our rose still had petals.
The first frost came to East Thetford right at the end of
September, earlier to the Vershire Heights or the “hill country”. Lucky for me,
I got to drive for a month, right at the peak of the Fall season, in between
the (Connecticut) river and the Heights, thereby seeing almost two Fall seasons
unfold at once, as they were staged so differently, the colors being quite a
bit more advanced in the Vershire Heights than here. Everyday I drove through
Thetford Hill, Post Mills, West Fairlee, Vershire and Chelsea, enjoying the
peculiar New England architecture, the village greens, and intimate vignettes
of village life. The corn turned from green to brown and was harvested and the
fields that once closed in, now opened up and the naked trees showed the hidden
depth and structure of the forest. New England felt not as closed in with the
leaves all off, kind of nice for an Arizonan used to seeing a hundred miles on
any given day.
The first frosts came as I was painting exterior windows and
the jackets went on and the hands were numb and I wiped ice off the sills and I
discovered paint that works to 35 degrees. We had morning after morning of
decent frosts, some hard and then it warmed up to the 70’s for two or three days and that is when the
trees went over the top, amazing in their brilliance, glowing almost to
fluorescence. And then came hard rain and more frost and wind and the leaves
came off rapidly. I knew the peak, I just knew it; it was self evident, after
watching so closely since the summer. I even knew when the peak of summer had
passed, with the first round of plants going to seed.
So now, the veil of night lifts to show a deep purple
whiteness. Out there in the dawn, in the muted light, is a blanket of crunchy
snow. The cat sleeps on the windowsill and the dog lies at the top of the
stairs, a clock ticks and the stove crackles in the basement. I feel all the
magic that I ever did. The neighbor’s house looks like gingerbread, a pure
white roof and the glow of windows out into the darkness. That is an
archetypical scene here, the big farm house at night, with light glowing from
the windows; it speaks of home, for ever how many thousands of generations,
home. We would see this on our way back from Whippi-Dip over in Fairlee,
getting a soft-serve ice cream on a late summer evening.
Tomorrow I will drive over to Keene, NY, near Lake Placid,
to recertify my Wilderness First Responder, having to navigate my way around
Lake Champlain. I see now icicles hanging off the edge of the roof and a forest
frosted with white. I will have to make a snowman. This is my first snow with
me living in the East in twenty years! I like the feeling of being home, here in
this land, with Kim. We will see the Messiah in Boston on December 12th.
We will make a memory to sit like a jewel embedded in the seasons.
Some days later I reflect again: the first snow followed
soon after the peak of the maples and there was the sense that Fall and its
splendor had come and gone. But in the aftermath came the surprise of the
lingering oaks and a deep brown hanging on. This was sort of a post-Fall. All
the hype surrounded the changing of the maples and lo and behold there was
still plenty left after the maples revealed their peculiar inner shapes. How
long could the oaks hold on I wondered? Now on November 10th and
they are mostly gone, but they stayed well into Halloween. Alas they were not
western live oaks and the leaves came off, in flurries of cold wind that
finished sweeping the last of the forest to gray. The branches sway in their
grayness and stark outlines, punctuated by the distinctive color of
evergreen.
The gourds and pumpkins still linger but after having been
frosted multiple times and now frozen, they have begun to putrefy and Jacob
wants to blow them up with fire works out in the field. Behind all the fuss and
dropped leaves being frozen and crunching to drab brown dust under my feet,
while oak leaves provide the only remnant of color in the last blanketing of
the ground, behind this is the huffing and puffing of Winter. Fall is still fun
and games. Winter is in a class more than poetic, more than colorful. Winter is
serious business, and seriously stark and beautiful as well. I knew things had
changed to Winter when I was stuck on the side of a snowy road and had to chain
up just to get home. I saw a two-wheel drive truck flipped over with the cab
sheared off near an icy bridge. I’ve done the best I can with studded snow
tires and 500 pounds of granite ballast in the back of my truck. Bring it on. I
want to make snow men and wax poetic about the silent cold of Winter.
The frost has crumbled most plants, which have broken and
stand as mute skeletons of the Summer and Fall. Now the wind howls outside,
with freezing rain and snow forecast, but it is still just the beginning.
Driving out into New England life now is like being in a Peter Breughal
painting, with distant fields covered white and rock walls and trees bounding off
hills and villages. The hard depths of Winter have yet to come.
The epitaph to the drama of the season’s change has come now
with the last Tamaracks changing to rust. The ground is heaved and frozen
solid. Ice lines the river and ponds are covered with sheets of ice. The dog’s
five-gallon bucket of water is frozen solid. It was ten degrees yesterday and
today, a bit rough at first but now OK, I don’t have three jackets and a hat on
inside the house so I must be adapting.
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