“Ghosts of River Road”
Inevitably, one morning late each year sycamores appear along the banks of the Chagrin River. Rising up the steep slopes bounding the river, deciduous trees of all manner crowd the hills for six months draping the landscape in a mantle of green, then briefly in October fire. All the while, sycamores wait silently unnoticed until winter’s first storm arrives in the night, its gusts and freezing rain borne on the edge of a cold front. Broad leaves of maple, white and red oak, mature beech and cherry, even sycamores are stripped in torrents of wind and rain, papering the forest floor in bronze and rust only to fade in brief days ahead.
As a child I recall the magic but also the melancholy of seasons past as we would drive along the river, observing the ghostly sycamores, their white trunks, sclerotic branches and fingers imploring us closer – only the marescent leaves of young beech and black willow, tenacious and withering through winter remained.
Humbly, just out of river’s reach, a trinity of sycamore have stood year after year silent and still, obeisant, tethered to shale bedrock. Today, diverse woodlands carpet the Chagrin Valley and native hemlock and white pine stipple and texture the eastern slope of the river.
This image captures the same copse of sycamore, just south of Gates Mills village on the banks of the Chagrin river, the same I’ve photographed and written about before; one of life’s touchstones as gracious time has spared us both into a seventh decade.
