Photo of the Day: Overpeck County Park Extension, Ridgefield Park NJ

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.”—New England essayist and naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), journal entry for Aug. 23, 1853, in The Thoughts of Thoreau, edited by Edwin Way Teale (1962)

For the last several days in my area of the Northeast, as the fierce heat and humidity rampant in July and August finally gave way, I yielded to the spirit of Thoreau, and tried to get in as much walking (my favorite form of exercise) as I could.

Sunday seemed a particular harbinger of what is to come. The sun was glorious, pouring down, as Joni Mitchell might sing, “like butterscotch,” but there was such a crispness and even wind in the air that I felt obliged not just to wear a windbreaker but a sweatshirt as well.

None of that stopped me and many others from circulating throughout the Overpeck County Park Extension, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ. 

The bright sunshine beckoned us to come out and treat this as we would any other day, to take in the broad suburban landscape of broad fields and looming office towers in the distance. But the presence of masks among the many walkers reminded us that even with all the evidence of our senses, the end of this season has been unlike any other in our time.