Photo Journal: #1
Fall fell; that first snow smell; doors are the new benches
The seasons are shaking hands. Earlier this week Massachusetts finally saw its first snowfall, frosting plenty of yellow and orange leaves still on the trees. It was just enough to make things pretty and magical. This is not the case in March when even your eyeballs are encrusted in a layer of salt from the relentless shoveling and scraping and weathering. Still, I know how lucky we are to experience all 8-10 seasons for varying lengths of time. The teachings of renewal and change and resilience are always close at hand. I respect Fall’s diva attitude in not wanting to be rushed off stage so quickly just because a calendar page changes or some marketing executive in New York City wants us to buy junk we don’t need. I’m tired of the hustle on every damn front. So I’ll be hanging onto the hundred or so images I still have in my phone from October even as new ones of sparkling, frozen lakes and trees inked in black and white crowd them out. I want to be able to appreciate where I’ve been just as much as I want to honor where I am.
Fall Reflect’n:
This year the colors around lakes and rivers and swamps and ponds were absolutely stunning. Every time I came upon a scene like any of these, I felt like I was cheating because it was all so perfectly thrown together. Humans take note: Please stop deluding yourselves into thinking you can come up with anything that contains even one-eighth of the simple majesty Nature delivers everywhere on the regular as if it were as easy as blinking or ignoring your sister’s text message. You cannot. Just stop and use all that new free time to enjoy and be grateful and quit ruining, like, everything you touch.
That First Snow Smell: A lot of my women friends who have multiple children (like, on purpose and everything!) said that the cliché is true about how, in most cases, the memory of the intensiveness of labor fades and the love and joy and total awe over what your body is capable of achieving remains. This, they’ve said in a mostly convincing way, is what enables you to reup for birth after birth. So it is with the first snow of the season. All or most or enough of last winter’s weather trials and tribulations have been blissfully wiped from your cortex, so that when the snow begins to drift down in those early pillowy flakes, you are required by New England law to mash your face against the glass and ogle the lovely, transcendent little crystals that you will eventually come to think of as evil nemeses when they continue to fall in April.
The Doors (No, not THOSE doors…): If you’ve been reading/skimming regularly you know that I am a bit preoccupied with benches. The holiday season means that doors are the new benches, for me, at least. The decorated door/entryway is an artform born of skills I do not have! I don’t even trust myself to hang a wreath. It would be crooked or off-center or, most likely, too small because I have zero spatial relation abilities so it would end up looking like a green doughnut as if our house were marked by some deranged goblin baker. We are the couple with no children, no pets, and a lawn that looks like a landing strip at Area 51. I cannot risk the chance of losing the shred of neighborhood tolerance I have by maiming my door with some kind of holiday abomination. Anyway, I a-door (uggh, really? Just, leave, please, go) the seasonal facelift, even if it remains until July. Because if I could decorate—at all—I would definitely be petty enough to wave it around in everyone’s face year round. Respect.
Thanks for reading, friends! Stay well and stay curious!
X-She
Your photos are breathtaking and your captions make me smile! I love seeing the nature you see! ❤️