Photo of the Day: Late Fall, Hackensack River, Bergen County NJ

I took this image a week ago today, while walking through Johnson Park in Hackensack, NJ. With temperatures dropping, the number of walkers like myself weren’t as numerous as they were earlier in the year—and I expect that to be even more the case through the holiday season.

Quote of the Day (Martha Gellhorn, on November)

“In November you begin to know how long the winter will be.”—American journalist and novelist Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998), "November Afternoon," The Heart of Another (1941)

I took the image that accompanies this post a couple of days ago in Pondside Park in Harrington Park, a few towns away from me in Bergen County, NJ. I was coming back from a trip into Rockland County, NY when I saw this park on the side of the road, and pulled over for a walk.

I have increasingly felt that autumn is all too short a season in my part of the country, with warmer temperatures encroaching on the traditional point marking fall. The past several days, however, the temperatures have dropped and the winds have whipped up. I had to pull my scarf around me a little more tightly the other day as I circled this pond.

Leaf-changing—heck, leaf disappearance—can occur so rapidly these days. The magnificent profusion of colors seen on trees just a couple of weeks ago is all gone. The many leaves crunching beneath my feet were all brown, as were those that remained on trees for now.

So, to take up the question posed by Gellhorn so long ago, how long will winter be? I might have worried more about global warming if we continued to have balmy temperatures at this point. For now—fingers crossed—Earth is back into its usual rhythms, I hope.

Photo of the Day: Milton A. Votee Park, Teaneck NJ

A few days ago, after voting early in Teaneck, I took advantage of the newly crisp autumn temperatures to walk around the township’s Milton A. Votee Park.

I am sure that many of my readers who grew up in Bergen County either walked through the 40-acre park, played in it or drove past it. Dedicated by a former township mayor in 1940, it was renamed in his honor 19 years later. It was constructed with money from the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal federal agency, to help hire workers.

Government assistance enhanced the park, too, including a Green Acres grant during the administration of Gov. Chris Christie that built the current sportsplex, including a 60-ft. softball field, 60-ft. by 90-ft. baseball fields, two basketball courts, football/soccer fields, four tennis courts, and a handball court.

You can see the sportsplex in the background of this photo I took while in the park, as I made a circuit along the walking and bike paths. I gloried in the changing leaf colors and the blanket they formed on the grass, along with a quiet only broken by the sudden steps of two deer off to my right.

Quote of the Day (William Dean Howells, on November)

“How often, in how many a far November,
Of childhood and my children's childhood I was glad,
With the wild rapture of the Fall,
Of all the beauty, and of all
The ruin, now so intolerably sad.”—American man of letters William Dean Howells (1837-1920), “November,” originally printed in Stops of Various Quills (1895), republished in American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 2: Herman Melville to Stickney, American Indian Poetry, Folk Songs and Spirituals, edited by John Hollander (1993)

I took the image accompanying this post, of the Smithsonian Butterfield Habitat Garden, outside the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, when I was on vacation in Washington, DC, nine years ago this month.

Quote of the Day (Alexander Lawrence Posey, on Blowing Autumn Leaves)

“The air is filled with
Scarlet leaves, that, dropping,
Rise again, as ever,
With a useless sigh for
Rest—and it is Autumn.”— Muskogee Creek poet, journalist, and humorist Alexander Lawrence Posey (1873 –1908), “Autumn,” originally published in The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey (1910), reprinted in American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century (Vol II: Melville to Stickney, American Indian Poetry, Folk Songs and Spirituals), edited by John Hollander (1993).
 
For several hours last night, the wind was as wild as I could remember at any time so far this fall. So fast did the leaves blow and scatter in the path of my car that I couldn’t imagine any leaf could remain in any tree in my neck of the woods of northern New Jersey.
 
(I took the image accompanying this post 12 years ago this month at State Line Lookout, Palisades Interstate Park, in Alpine, NJ.)

Photo of the Day: The Flames of Autumn, Overpeck County Park, NJ

The other day, when I stepped out the door of my house, I couldn’t believe how fast and so much the leaves on a nearby tree were coming down.

Further confirmation that autumn was here at last came as I walked around Overpeck County Park, a few miles from where I live in Bergen County, NJ. The tree you see here had not really changed since summer, but the sudden change I noticed on Wednesday led me to take this photograph.

Quote of the Day (Anton Chekhov, on a Dismal Autumn Twilight in Czarist Russia)

“A crowd of coach-men and pilgrims was sitting in Uncle Tikhon's tavern. An autumn downpour with raging wet winds that lashed across their faces had driven them to seek refuge there. The tired, drenched travelers sat listening to the wind, dozing on benches by the wall….

“Outside the tavern door splashes of rain flew around the dim, grimy lantern. The wind howled like a wolf, yelping, as if to tear itself away from its tether by the door. From the yard came the sound of horses snorting and hoofs thudding in the mud. It was dank and cold.”—Russian playwright and short-story writer Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), “In Autumn,” originally printed in 1883, reprinted in The Undiscovered Chekhov: Forty-Three New Stories, translated by Peter Constantine (1999)

Well, with this kind of terrible weather—not to mention life under the Czars (and later, under the Communists, then under Putin)—you can understand that the tavern patrons are a miserable, even sodden, bunch.

But one in particular—a man of about 40, wearing “a wrinkled summer coat covered with mud, calico pants, and rubber galoshes without shoes”—has his own personal reasons for begging Uncle Tikhon for a drink.

This was not one of the stories that Chekhov had collected in his life. But already you can see, from this short description, how he was learning to write concisely but vividly. A year away from earning his medical degree, he had also learned to observe the outward signs that pointed to a human being’s physical and mental condition.

Quote of the Day (Henry David Thoreau, on ‘Beauty Visible to Us in the Landscape’)

“Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them; for there is no power to see in the eye itself, any more than in any other jelly. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of Nature are for this reason concealed from us all our lives. The gardener sees only the gardener's garden. Here, too, as in political economy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature does not cast pearls before swine. There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate,—not a grain more.”—American essayist, naturalist and poet Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), “Autumnal Tints,” The Atlantic, October 1862

I took the image accompanying this post in late October 2008.

Photo of the Day: Riverside Park, NYC, Mid-November

This past weekend, before having lunch with a college friend where we first met in the late 1970s—Morningside Heights, the home of Columbia University—I also took a walk to other sites in the neighborhood, including Riverside Park.

As a college freshman taking a jogging course to fulfill my phys ed requirements, I came to realize, on many an exhausting run, the size—and hilliness!—of this vast tract, though I was in no condition to appreciate its beauty. 

But I was on Sunday, with many of the autumn leaves still clinging to the trees and the rest forming a multi-colored natural carpet in this officially designated scenic landmark in New York—one of only eight in the city.

Quote of the Day (G. K. Chesterton, on Autumn, ‘When All the Leaves Are Gold’)

“In youth I sought the golden flower
Hidden in wood or wold,
But I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold.”—English man of letters G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), “Gold Leaves,” from The Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900)

Quote of the Day (Edna St. Vincent Millay, with a Different Experience of Fall)

“In the fall of the year, in the fall of the year,
I walked the road beside my dear.
The rooks went up with a raucous trill.
I hear them still, in the fall of the year.
He laughed at all I dared to praise,
And broke my heart, in little ways.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), “The Spring and the Fall,” in The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1922)
 
A century ago this month, Edna St. Vincent Millay became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. “The Spring and the Fall” was part of the collection that won her the honor.
 
This poem, which I came across in a school reader from 70 years ago, reminded me of why I have enjoyed Millay. Read in its entirety, it touches on the “ecstatic passion [and] skepticism of enduring love” that, New Yorker reviewer Maggie Doherty wrote in May 2022, represented the “great themes” of the lyric poet.

Over the last century, she has somewhat fallen out of favor with critics, despite Nancy Milford’s well-received 2001 biography, selections from the poet’s diaries published last year, and the heroic efforts of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society to preserve Steepletop, her longtime home in Austerlitz, NY.
 
No matter. Millay may be one of those authors, like the novelist Thomas Wolfe, who survive, barely, on high school and college curricula, but continue to find readers somehow.

You can find many interesting posts on Millay on the blogosphere, but you might find especially thoughtful this February 2021 post from the Farnsworth Art Museum that feature Maine poets reading letters and poems that focus on Millay’s exploration of loss and renewal—as well as their own poems in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, personal loss, and the threat of global climate change. 

It’s a welcome reminder that, despite the intensely intimate nature of Millay’s early, best-known work, she became increasingly engaged with national and world issues as time went on.)

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: Fall View of Park and River, Nyack NY

This past Saturday, with daylight contracting and fall descending more heavily, I drove up to Nyack, NY. Though longtime readers of this blog know that I have strolled through this Rockland County village filled with lovely Victorian homes a fair amount in recent years, I visited more often in the 1980s, when a good friend of mine lived here.

My friend, who moved down to Florida in the early 1990s, passed away in late May. Though the warm temperatures down south were better for her health during the winter, she had thought of moving back up here several years ago, only to defer the decision because of the pandemic and insufficient income in the changing real estate market.

On one of our many long-distance phone calls, she grew weepily nostalgic about the changing seasons she missed from the Northeast. Unable to pay my final respects after her death in Florida, I thought of revisiting the town that had once meant so much to her.

Veterans Memorial Park, which I managed to photograph just before sunset, seemed a pretty good spot to bring my friend viscerally to mind again. It was just down the street from her home, and from the shoreline she would often push off into the Hudson River with her kayak.

Nyack is a unique community, with a long history and bohemian vibe to go with its picturesque riverine setting. But a place is more than a point on a map or a real estate agent’s listing, but a collection of souls.

In the restless journey of her life, one such soul settled here for a while. Last Saturday afternoon, the sunlight along the Hudson may have faded, but I knew that my friend’s impact on my life would not.

Photo of the Day: Deep in Autumn, Olsen Park, Bogota NJ

There were a number of warm days early this fall, delaying the change in leaf colors. But here in Bergen County, NJ, it had truly turned around this week. The window of time to behold this beautiful change of scenery has significantly narrowed between the shorter days and the gusty weather that sent most of these leaves tumbling to the ground rapidly.

Today, I managed to get some walking in before, the meteorologists predicted, another major storm like yesterday’s arrived. So I ambled along on the west side of the Hackensack River in Foschini Park, then crossed the William F. Ryan Memorial Bridge to Bogota’s Oscar E. Olsen Park.

There, I sat in a gazebo, where I took several photos, including the one seen here.

Quote of the Day (Josep Pla, on Autumn and the Sea)

"Autumn is the season most suited to the work of men today. At this time of year city dwellers discover that streets and squares are clean and luminous, the air is light and cool, and people walk with a spring in their step. Since this has to do with temperament, I think I am a man of the sea and working at sea is what I find most congenial, agreeable and easy to grasp. I cannot disassociate the sea from autumn." — Catalan journalist and author Josep Pla (1897-1981), diary entry for Nov. 9, 1918, in The Gray Notebook, translated by Peter Bush (2013)

I took the image accompanying this post when I was on vacation in the autumn of 2014 in Beaufort, SC, by the Atlantic Ocean.

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 Twilight

When I took this photo the other day looking out on the creek at Overpeck Park, a couple of miles from where I live in Bergen County, NJ, it seemed that I was not merely making a visual record of a typical twilight in autumn, but even a goodbye to the season this year.

Almanacs had predicted that sunset was still a way off, but you’d never know it from the headlights on in cars negotiating their way under uncertain gray skies. There's so much darkness in the atmosphere in the attached image that I feel like I could be looking at a J.M.W. Turner landscape painting.

Temperatures haven’t been regularly frigid this year, as they had in past late Novembers. In fact, periodic upswings in the mercury have been enough to bring people out in sizable amounts, if not the droves of spring and summer.

But on a day like the one this weekend, it depressed the spirits to have sunset slip away, even if only until tomorrow. A walk is an activity that anyone can relish, no matter your job status or income level. To have a contracted afternoon felt in keeping with a year in which so much we once took for granted could no longer be enjoyed.

Photo of the Day: Autumn in Earnest: Petruska Park, Paramus NJ

It seemed that that only two weeks ago, fall was taking its time getting here in the Northeast. But these days, turn around and the seasons change suddenly.

And so it was this past weekend that I became fully aware that autumn had arrived. The realization came full force this past Sunday while I was walking around Michael Petruska Jr. Memorial Park in Paramus, several miles from where I live in Bergen County, NJ.

I came upon this stretch of green by accident, while trying to get somewhere else. Farview Avenue, where it is located, would, in many other communities, seem quite busy.

But in the borough of Paramus, with a well-earned reputation as the mall capital of the United States, this stretch of green feels like an island of stillness and serenity, a far remove from traffic-clogged Routes 4 and 17. For me, a Bergen County resident for virtually my whole life, it was a delight to come upon something I had never encountered before.

In 1958, North Jersey-based developer Michael J. Petruska Sr. deeded 12 acres to Paramus with the only condition being that the land be named for his son, who had died in a tragic plane crash. In the mid-Sixties, the park came to fruition when borough volunteers responded to a nationwide beautification contest sponsored by Lady Bird Johnson through a 24-hour “plant-a-thon” on the property.

When I came to the park in mid-afternoon, the skies were overcast, with temperatures having fallen to a high of 52 degrees Fahrenheit—a more than 20-degree drop from the prior day. Jackets, sweatshirts and hoodies had become a requirement overnight.

On the courts, two teams were playing on the basketball court and two guys were wielding hockey sticks—though, by this point in the year, the baseball field was empty. On the nearby path circling the park, several parents were out with their children. Social distancing was easier to maintain with the mercury having dropped.

As I circled the park I took many pictures, but I was especially drawn to this scene. Though a good many orange, yellow and red leaves stayed in place, others had meekly surrendered, leaving their trees bare.

I imagine, after several more days of rain, wind and further temperature drops, that Indian summer has now beaten a full-fledged retreat. These days more than ever, when I relish the chance to walk around, autumn has never seemed so beautiful and brief.