Seasons

I drove into the North Carolina mountains today and watched the beginning of autumn as I did so. Green maples tipped with red, birches shading to gold. The speckles of the light shining through the green canopy. Here and there and evergreen staying strong, Remaining what it was. Forever.

When I was in college, we took a trip to the Poconos to go camping. It was April and we left after watching the storm roll in across from the west it shined everything new and in the glowingly sunset, We took off glad the rain had it say.

As we drove up the highway I watched the greens in the woods. Penn’s woods. It was the bright green of spring, the pale color of green tea. In the spring, the tulip trees have leaves smaller than my palm, but I knew that in the summer those leaves would grow to be bigger than my hand. In the spring, you can pop a tulip tree leaf, capturing pocket of air smacking it through the membrane, crack. But tulip tree leaves in the summer are far too strong for such things. Far too green.

I think of the black spruce in Alaska, those “evergreens.” Except most of the year they don’t seem green at all. Against the contrast of the white snow they fully live up to their name and the monochromatic winter is halted only by the sky. But in the fall they are evergreen. Against the bright golden yellow of the aspen trees, all the highlights of the needles come forth and for a glorious two weeks—a season—you see the contrast of the green and the gold and the blue and the brown.

I’ll take the seasons. I’ll enjoy the speckles of gold in the green of the trees. The flash red here in there as autumn begins to take its hold. I’ll glory in the sight of the sky through the canopy of the woods in the deep of the winter when the branches are bare. I’ll revel in the pale green spring—the flowers, the brightness. And summer, even summer I’ll take. I hope it will be like Michigan in June. Though in North Carolina I’m more likely to get the heat of a southern August. Even so I’ll take summer because its presence reminds me of all the other seasons that I will get to see.

After all, I live in a place where there are seasons.