Photo of the Day: Downtown Tree in Autumn, Englewood NJ

A late dear friend of mine who had moved to Florida said once that one reason why she missed the Northeast was the chance to see all four seasons, especially fall. After the sometimes brutal heat of the summer this year, autumn, though not yet in its mature beauty, arrived a bit earlier than I expected, but I’m just fine with that.

Though it’s best to see the changing colors in the countryside, it can surprise you even in a suburban downtown, as it did with me on Dean Street this morning in my hometown of Englewood, NJ. It was still early in the morning when I took this photo, just before shoppers would come out in droves.

Quote of the Day (Hal Borland, on Autumn, ‘The Eternal Corrective’)

“Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon?” — American writer, journalist and naturalist Hal Borland (1900-1978), Sundial of the Seasons (1964)

I took the attached photo of a scene from Ringwood Manor here in New Jersey back in November 2015. We’re still nowhere near the colorful landscape I marveled at back then. But dropping temperatures in this area like we’ve had the last couple of days and nights will bring us closer to that point.

Photo of the Day: Petting Zoo, Fall Festival, Englewood NJ

This past Sunday, my hometown of Englewood, NJ, held what it called its “Fall Festival.” There are those—high-school students and their parents, I would guess, most prominently—who see the period immediately after Labor Day as the fall.

I still hold out for the date of the traditional autumnal equinox—i.e., tomorrow. Pushing for any earlier date ignores not only that celestial fact, but the gradual but real increase in September temperatures over the last few decades.

Well, even if my city’s sense of seasons might be a bit off, its sense of what will bring out crowds isn’t. This past summer, the festival featured roughly 50 merchants and information vendors promoting their businesses in Depot Square.

But I couldn’t help but smile at the free petting zoo. Its creatures certainly appealed to me—a big reason why I took this photograph.

Photo of the Day: Flashback, November 2015, New Jersey State Botanical Garden, Ringwood NJ

I was stunned by the beauty of the New Jersey State Botanical Garden when I visited five years ago. This photo, I think, gives you a good idea of why I came to feel that way.

Photo of the Day: Fall, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA

I took this photo in the fall of 2010, amid an overnight stay in a bed-and-breakfast in Blacksburg, VA. I only regret now that I didn’t have more time to spend in the area, or to see more of the major object of that brief visit, the lovely campus of Virginia Tech, seen here.

Photo of the Day: Rusty Colors, Flat Rock Brook, Englewood, NJ

It seems hard to believe, after the three to four inches of snow that fell in the New York area this past weekend, but only about a month ago, fall was still hanging on, seen in the russet hues I saw at Flat Rock Brook in my hometown of Englewood, NJ. I took this photograph in the same afternoon session that included this other shot I posted previously.

Photo of the Day: Season’s Turning, Riverside Park, NYC

This afternoon, on my day off, I strolled around and took pictures in Riverside Park in Manhattan. Thiry-eight years ago, in my freshman year at Columbia University, taking a jogging class that called for circuits loops up and down from Riverside Drive toward the Hudson River, I had grown somewhat familiar with the area of the park around 116^th Street—but today I went somewhat south of that, from 79^th to 99^th Streets.

Autumn is not at its height yet, but I was able to find a few spots where the colors of fall are beginning to appear, like here.

Quote of the Day (C. P. Snow, on a Pre-War Autumn in England’s Cambridge)

“There was the wistful smell of the Cambridge autumn, and in the tailors' shops gleamed the little handbills, blue letters on white with the names of the week's university teams.” —C. P. Snow, The Light and the Dark (1947

Photo of the Day: Fall Colors—Not There Yet, But…

For nearly 30 years, Nyack Beach State Park in Rockland County, NY, has been one of my favorite places to stop in fall—or, indeed, in almost any time of year. This coming November will be two years since I took this particular shot.

Because of the very warm weather we had in this part of the Northeast through most of September, I think it’s still going to be a few weeks before we see the colors of autumn come out. Then it’ll be all in a rush and, before we know it, the season will be over.