Fall Comes to the City
It astonishes me that even in the city, the seasons hold sway. Halloween night is approaching. Decorative bats imitate nature. Skeletons, witches, graves, and ghosts populate the evening along with dancing sassafras leaves of orange and gold next to nature's own black winged creatures swooping amongst the trees.
Even as isolated from nature as I am in the city--I don't see the stars, I walk on concrete or blacktop--nature still touches with fire the fence on my corner, a flaming red Virginia creeper climbing up the metal lattice. The maples at the bottom of the hill have long since gone up in flame. Their four momentary torches of burnt red and amber are going from ember to white ashes. Bright orange bittersweet berries overhang the greenery on our fence.
It's not just that nature manages to keep a toehold here in the city, it's that even here in the city nature has an exuberance that--even between the canyons of skyscrapers--can surprise and delight. It's wildness does encroach in strange ways. I swear I have seen an adolescent coyote cross the street. And let me tell you that is a strange sight--not just because of the strangeness of seeing a wild creature in the city but for the strangeness of the creature itself. I couldn't identify it at first with ears long in relation to its body like a jackrabbit's and hind legs so long and out of proportion they looked like the hind end of a kangaroo! But naturalists have confirmed we have coyotes in Arlington. We do have, in the neighborhood, our raccoon that lives in the drainage underground and our occasionally spotted fox. These creatures are strange to see in the city and a little discomforting walking down the middle of the street. But that is not what I am talking about. It is not the somewhat misfit toehold, but the life nature has of itself.
Surprise had me searching the trees for the guilty parent of the furry hatted acorns that littered the sidewalk in front of my bank, belonging to no oak that I knew of. When I looked up, I realized it was not acorn but some form of chestnut. Searching for the seed and leaf at home, I would say it was, perhaps, a variety of sweet chestnut, but I can't find the specific match. Let me know if you know these unidentified children.
Can you identify these nature artifacts?
Yes, I hear you that those trees were planted by man, but nature assembled those zany shaggy-bark hatted nuts and scattered them into the careful beds of petunias for a little wildness.
And the seeds that actually are acorns have gone wild in profusion this fall. I have nearly skated down the mildest of slopes covered with tiny rolling pinstriped acorns. This fall--how did I miss them before?--I've become familiar with huge, round acorns that look more the part of the seeds of the mighty oak. But when they hit the ground with a loud, resonant sound, it is not a thunk or a thud, but more hollow ping pong ball! They're light and airy! This profusion of oak seeds literally covering the ground over city blocks is out of place. No one wants any of these seeds to sprout into tiny oaks. There is no place, no room for the random growth of a hardwood forest. Not in the city.
Despite a last dash of spring-like wet, 80-degree weather, the leaves continue to abandon the trees, leaving forlorn bare branches reaching to the sky. I picked up the scent of fall on the wind. The tiny dark leaves on the holly-like bush with the delicate white flowers and their heavy sweet scent have laden the air with their own particular musk. Fall smells fecund--heavy wet scents of rich, ripe harvest; sweet scents with rotting; leaf mold with fresh rain. Fall brings an ambiguous cornucopia of messages.
The darkening days vibrate a base in my spine, a note, an inkling of the change of season. The colder winds blow a warning to prepare for wintry blasts. Winter is coming. There is an urgency to harvest and store amidst the scary jack-o-lanterns. The wheel turns. Fall is flying, and the Sun is going about its rounds inexorably. Nature is moving through her cycles. I anticipate the wheel's turn to the sharp-edged ice crystals shining through winter, the stillness of death in its season.
It's fun to read your east coast viewpoint on autumn, Linda!
It's almost Halloween (Nevada Day) in the Great Basin Desert, too! There aren't many decorations in my rural neighborhood, where the lack of sidewalks and streetlights and the distance between houses dissuades trick-or-treaters. I don't have any trees, but the Rabbitbrush is providing bright yellow fall colors, and my sneezing proves that the yellow dust is pollen!
Coyotes and jackrabbits are plentiful in Carson Valley, but I've never seen a fox here. Quail and cottontails are usually pretty numerous - along with assorted hawks to eat them - but the population of wild fauna seems smaller than usual due to our ongoing drought, which also brings more wildfires than usual! Come to think of it, we've had more than the usual number of bear sightings in my neighborhood this year. And I always love hearing "my" Great Horned Owl hooting through the night..
I need to finish vacuuming out the furnace, changing the filters, and lighting the pilot before fall weather starts in earnest. It's already getting down to 30s in the mornings, but back up to 80 or so in the afternoons! Final rows of alfalfa bask in the sun as they quickly turn to hay and are baled for use during the winter.
As the sharp-edged ice crystals return to your big city, I'm hoping for a soft yet bountiful snowpack in the Carson Range to provide vital time-release fresh water in the coming spring! One advantage to living without streetlights is that the Milky Way is almost always visible as a river of light in the dark night sky. Freezing weather solidifies the effect and removes the shimmering atmospheric artifacts of hot August nights..