Fri02

“Chagrin River, Wraiths of the Season”

Posted on Dec, Fri, 2022 in Black & White, Musings from Still Point

“Chagrin River, Wraiths of the Season”

 

Driving along Chagrin River Road, winding north from Rt. 87 another three tortuous miles as the road traces the river and escarpment into the village of Gates Mills, one is mesmerized by the desolate beauty that has arrived overnight. Northern Ohio’s autumn landscape is frequently transformed in the course of an evening as the deciduous forests that descend into the Chagrin Valley surrender their color to the cold winds of November.

Each year the sudden manifestation of ghostly sycamores (image above) unnerves me, appearing specter-like in a brief moment. Beech and birch, maple and oak, even black cherry shedding their luminous colors overnight, leaving behind the bones of great American sycamores. Standing like sentries, dendritic arms stretching to us who would tremble, holding dominion only to recede into the verdant masks of May.
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Fri02

“New Haven Mills, Vermont

Posted on Dec, Fri, 2022 in Landscapes, Musings from Still Point

“New Haven Mills, Vermont”

Departing Hinesburg VT. (15 miles south of Burlington), 10 days ago, Kate and I drove south on Rt. 116 through small towns and villages like Bristol, Starkville and New Haven Mills before reaching the college town of Middlebury, home to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the oldest and one of the world’s most acclaimed writers’ conferences. Since its founding in 1926 it has attracted many of this country’s greatest writers, including such luminaries as Frost, Welty, Stegner, Cather and numerous other notable national and international poets and novelists.

Notwithstanding the picturesque Middlebury campus, the photograph below was taken in the small, rather nondescript village of New Haven Mills, immediately preceding the college. It showcases the old Lampson School (now a home) occupying several acres on a hillock overlooking the village and the New Haven Mills’ river. The scenery and 19th century character of the village can be intimated through this image. Built in 1868 and included in the “National Register of Historic Places,” it has been cited for its beautiful, Italianate architecture. For me it held particular interest having grown up in the Connecticut Western Reserve of northeast Ohio. We lived in a historic old farmhouse constructed originally in the tradition of a Connecticut home to which was added an Italianate styled section in 1843. The older, original section of the house (my childhood home) was constructed between 1815 and 1817 by John Seward, the first minister of the Connecticut Western Reserve.

Passing through these small towns and villages, experiencing vestiges of the past as we made our way to Hudson, New York and the Catskills, we reflected on the early days of America.
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Mon14

“Autumn Grass, Hudson River Valley”

Posted on Nov, Mon, 2022 in Gallery Image, Landscapes, Musings from Still Point

“Autumn Grass, Hudson River Valley”

Back home only a week, missing and musing about this inspirational landscape for the Hudson River School artists. A scene from our hike of Frederic Church’s estate, “Olana”, perched above the banks of the Hudson River. The unseen reverse view captures the full sweep of the Catskills and the Hudson River valley below; a dramatic backdrop to the home of Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School. He well might have opined on the role of providence putting us in the valley at the perfect autumn moment. We counted our blessings.
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Sun06

“Late to Flush”

Posted on Nov, Sun, 2022 in Landscapes, Musings from Still Point

“Late to Flush Mallards”

This morning (Wednesday, Oct. 19) provided for an unanticipated closeup as migrating mallards, after holding tight through freezing rain and the season’s first trace of snow, burst into flight at the west end of the marsh . In deeper water, 100 yards to the east a pair of redheads and a raft of lesser scaups, more backsides visible than heads, were tipping and resurfacing like “drinking bird toys”, as they foraged below.

A reluctant yet serendipitous decision to hike through freezing rain provided rare color as poplars, maple and wild cherry were already brilliant. White and red oaks are in early stages of rust and the sedge, rush and reeds range from red to light green at this moment. For a few days only, it is the latter, the light green grasses, that give the landscape another dimension.
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Mon03

“Goldenrod, September’s Child”

Posted on Oct, Mon, 2022 in Landscapes, Musings from Still Point

Goldenrod, September’s Child

 

Goldenrod was on my mother’s list of least desirables, an aversion imprinted on her in early childhood by my grandmother, who, as a teenager, carried with her into the 20th Century a set of myths and folklore about plants, food and health. In her pantheon of seasonal allergens, goldenrod ranked above ragweed and grass pollens and would never have found its way into her vast store of healing herbal tinctures. No doubt she would have suffered the vapors had she learned goldenrod extracts and pollen would become an effective anodyne for respiratory and digestive ailments as well as the treatment of UTI’s.

Notwithstanding the healing properties of the plant, Northeast Ohio’s landscapes are colored and textured by this wildflower as it contributes to the region’s autumn aesthetic. Rising, rhythmically, sweeping over meadows and fields, filling culverts with color, goldenrod induces the warm nostalgia of early autumn, the bittersweet longing for summer before its passing, reminding us perhaps of Shakespeare’s 18th Sonnet (“ … and summer’s lease hath all to short a date.”). Or, the qualities of Saudade, evoking the sweet melancholy and yearning for a past place or person, so inextricably infused into the culture of the Portuguese and Spanish.

Adding to an emotional state of mind, last week cumulus clouds formed the trailing edge of an autumn cold front, competing with patches of goldenrod as they caught brief intervals of sunlight in Squire Valleevue’s eastern meadow. Not evident in this photograph are the purple and white asters blooming in profusion this week- good timing for a visit to this remarkable landscape in the Chagrin Valley.
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Mon28

“End of Winter, Rushes and Purple Stemmed Aster”

Posted on Mar, Mon, 2022 in Landscapes, Musings from Still Point

“End of Winter, Rushes and Purple Stemmed Aster”

 

Favorite lines I return to at the end of each season are from Robert Frost’s “Reluctance”, concluding with the final stanza, “Ah, when to the heart of man was it ever less than a treason to go with the drift of things … and bow and accept the end of a love or a season.”

This photograph is my version of a winter meadow; purple-stemmed asters and bulrushes, absent color, angulated against the snow create a composition all their own, still gentle, still determined, casting the subtle shadows of mid afternoon. Crossing the ice I thought this was the last image of snow for the season, a day before a thaw would cut off access to the north end of the marsh until next winter. Late that afternoon, the lip of the bank was barely discernible as its faint shadow traced the shoreline of a small cove (a bight the British might say). The frozen waters, little more than crystal shards, were punctuated with mineral mounds of wetland soil where outcrops of sedge and rush and long deceased pin oaks still stand, all rising above the ice awaiting the new season.

Anticipating the arrival of warmer weather and the landscape’s imminent transformation, I turn to the window, to the snow falling tonight, building in defiance on dogwood, maples and daffodils, all urgent to open.
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