Autumn 🍂

It is the first eve of fall. Not the autumn equinox, but the unspoken start when rabbits and sparrows and those who do not live by our calendars mark the beginning of a new season. Everything on earth suggests the end of summer: the warm breeze has been overtaken by a still chill, streams that once gushed sit in dusty silence, and bright blue skies fall to a solemn golden ruler. As evening approaches, I stroll into the foothills. Hiking is not the right word, nor walk - there is not the same level of poetry in those words to match this magical time of day. So we must be strollers at dusk. At the top of the little mound we call “two-three hill”, other locals call “anthill” and Floridians would call a mountain, I lean against the knotted tree and listen to the sky frayed with gold and crimson. The scene of the city below is peaceful from here. As the last silent verse sings from sky to soul, I arise and descend the hill in a sleep-walker like fashion, and return home. The beauty of that evening still has not dissipated. It is a droplet of oil in a lake of memories, impervious to the evaporation of time.

Winter ❄️

Tonight I do not know the road that I have traveled thousands of times. The silence of midnight and soft snow transform it into unknown territory. In the moonlight speckled by snow, walking up this road becomes a romantic adventure. Whenever I’m walking through the snow at night, the immortal words of Robert Frost fall upon me like snowflakes.

In the morning, I wake up to a glorious sight. Today, the mountains smile, the snow caps their pearly whites, and the world is set for a toothpaste commercial.

Summer ☀️

I like to think of each day of the summer as a ripening cherry tree. Today is when those cherries are stolen by birds or plucked by careful gardners: just juicy enough for sharp eyes to spot. Yes, it is a ripe day and none other. It is a day for playing fanciful games and my sister and I are doing just that: giving each tree a personality. It is funny how some trees really are just disposed to have a certain personality. The pine near the corner of the street is a wise old sailor who has loads of stories. The aspen sapling is something of a flirt, though extremely clever. I hope if I were cast as a tree to be a birch.

Spring 🌸

It is a perfect alpine spring morning, as all alpine spring mornings are designed to be. Sundry wildflowers mingle with winter grasses, catching up on the gossip of the cold months. Pikas squeak in glee or terror or just normal conversation – impossible to tell. Water from snowmelt burbles and flirts with the sun, winking and flashing glittering smiles above.

Time takes a breath here, stopping and tipping its hat to the mountains and then taking a great leap to fulfill its duty. Small pine trees emerge out of granite at impossible angles. Their embattled bark soaks up the new light - a respite from the divergent winter winds of the valley.

I am simply an observer, which is a wonderful position for this scene of course. Unbeknownst to my eye no doubt many battles are being fought on a micro-scale: the competing vegetation wrestling for sunlight, nasty insect fights or so the rumors go – but maybe these are just narratives created by creepy-crawley enemies. But on my granite perch, I see only tranquility.