Trees
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it
becomes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
I had hated locust trees when I was growing up. Michigan autumn comes and goes quickly, in a matter of days. I would run around our property, scan the roadways on the thirty minute drive to school, over rivers and through fields, trying to find the most vibrant shades of red and orange. I would pick my favorite trees based on their ability to represent the fullest range of shades from green to red and everything in between. In this, maple trees rarely disappointed me.
Locusts, on the other hand, were a waste. Why bother planting a tree that does nothing but turn one solid shade of yellow each fall? There were never any surprises with locusts--they would never do anything but turn one monotonous shade of yellow, and I resented their presence in the otherwise red, orange and green fall landscape.
But then I moved to New York, where I live uptown, looking out over the East River. There are no migrations of thousands of white swans that settle on the river for a day or two as they used to do in Michigan, to tell me winter is coming. There are no flocks of Canada geese noisily dragging their V across the sky, trailing a veil of mist and gray and autumn, and there are no leaves whose color I can watch for the changing of the seasons. I have only the temperature of the wind that hits my face as I make my way to the subway to rely on.
Today, for no reason in particular, I took a different path to the train when I came across a small cluster of locust trees in a locked up park on the Upper East Side. A fence some ten feet in height enclosed the park, and the fence was lined with tall, dense pines, so tall they must have been planted in the 70s when the park was created, and of a variety so bland that I've never bothered to learn the name. Beyond what I've described, you can't see much else in the now locked up and abandoned park as you walk past it, other than weather-beaten plastic shopping bags caught here and there along the base of the trees and fence. But between the rusty bars, at the spot where the entrance to the park used to be, I could see five or six locust trees in the middle of the park, whose leaves had all turned an arresting splash of vibrant yellow. The color shocked me. I stopped, took a photo, admired the trees. The yellow was so real, so alive, so spontaneous.
In this landscape of cheap red-brick apartment towers, forgettable pines, and the vast, gray expanse of cement streets and sidewalks, I thought: "and a summit and flower, there is a feeling they have for each other," and I finally learned the lesson.
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it
becomes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
I had hated locust trees when I was growing up. Michigan autumn comes and goes quickly, in a matter of days. I would run around our property, scan the roadways on the thirty minute drive to school, over rivers and through fields, trying to find the most vibrant shades of red and orange. I would pick my favorite trees based on their ability to represent the fullest range of shades from green to red and everything in between. In this, maple trees rarely disappointed me.
Locusts, on the other hand, were a waste. Why bother planting a tree that does nothing but turn one solid shade of yellow each fall? There were never any surprises with locusts--they would never do anything but turn one monotonous shade of yellow, and I resented their presence in the otherwise red, orange and green fall landscape.
But then I moved to New York, where I live uptown, looking out over the East River. There are no migrations of thousands of white swans that settle on the river for a day or two as they used to do in Michigan, to tell me winter is coming. There are no flocks of Canada geese noisily dragging their V across the sky, trailing a veil of mist and gray and autumn, and there are no leaves whose color I can watch for the changing of the seasons. I have only the temperature of the wind that hits my face as I make my way to the subway to rely on.
Today, for no reason in particular, I took a different path to the train when I came across a small cluster of locust trees in a locked up park on the Upper East Side. A fence some ten feet in height enclosed the park, and the fence was lined with tall, dense pines, so tall they must have been planted in the 70s when the park was created, and of a variety so bland that I've never bothered to learn the name. Beyond what I've described, you can't see much else in the now locked up and abandoned park as you walk past it, other than weather-beaten plastic shopping bags caught here and there along the base of the trees and fence. But between the rusty bars, at the spot where the entrance to the park used to be, I could see five or six locust trees in the middle of the park, whose leaves had all turned an arresting splash of vibrant yellow. The color shocked me. I stopped, took a photo, admired the trees. The yellow was so real, so alive, so spontaneous.
In this landscape of cheap red-brick apartment towers, forgettable pines, and the vast, gray expanse of cement streets and sidewalks, I thought: "and a summit and flower, there is a feeling they have for each other," and I finally learned the lesson.
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