October Morning on the Riverway
Oct. 24th, 2005 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanEDIT--this is a new draft of it
The Muddy River winds through Boston’s edge with Brookline. The dream of famed landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmsted, of a citydweller’s long meandering trail has yielded to the reality of a commuter highway, choked with morning rush hour. But below the streets named Fenway, Riverway, Jamaicaway, is the river itself, a stoic stream creeping along muddy ledges.
In the dull calm of morning twilight, the crispness of October seeps through the seams of my jacket. The river, warm from running across blacktop into storm drains, breathes visibly into the morning air. The mist clings to the slow water, idly making its way downstream as commuters hurry by on parallel courses. Bicycle tires crackle on leaves and pop on acorns. On the far side of the river is the roar of the auto traffic; behind me over an earthen berm are the rumbling tracks of the trolley. Sitting on the root of an old red oak, staring downriver at small trees dangling their branches into the murk, I might be forgiven the fantasy that the susurrant roar was the wind or ocean; steel wheels thundering on tracks can be taken for white water on rocks.
High above the varied noises of people and their machines making their ways to work is the busy clatter of birds. They speak of dwindling supplies of insects, an abundance of berries and tree nuts, and the constant redrawing and reinforcement of territorial boundaries, written in birdsong. A jay calls his name. Robins chatter and squabble. Nuthatches nasally chide each other and woodpeckers exchange whinnies.
Mallards drift along the black glass of the river. They dabble for sunken crumbs and the males bob their green heads in courtship. Females, patterned brown, duck heads in kind, to comfort their mates that their bond still holds. Straggling Canada geese, whose ancestors would have long left for southern lands, glide past stranded coffee cups. They linger for handouts and thrive on vast acres of manicured lawns that have replaced the farmland and the forest before it. The river, warmed and salted by its former life as street runoff, never freezes and provides refuge for ducks that migrate and geese that do not.
When the sun climbs over the hospital buildings, its light tumbles down through the high oaks and into the stained glass patterns of the lower trees and shrubs. Burning bush and viburnum splay pink and red like spilled wine. Chokecherry and crabapple are yellowing and ochred, weeping birches are already going bald at the top. The coarse leaves of the rangy swamp dogwoods redden and curl. Stubborn knotweeds and grasses cling green to the riverbank, loathe to drain away to brown.
The splendid beauty of October’s great show, painted in pigment and waning light, is a bittersweet glory. As any creature that has weathered more than one year keenly knows, Autumn’s colors are the reverse of the rainbow’s solace. As the beech leaves swell violet and maple’s crimsons explode, as ivy berries ripen blue and mosses cling to green, Nature warns that it all will give way soon to hard stony gray and cruel cold white.
The Muddy River winds through Boston’s edge with Brookline. The dream of famed landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmsted, of a citydweller’s long meandering trail has yielded to the reality of a commuter highway, choked with morning rush hour. But below the streets named Fenway, Riverway, Jamaicaway, is the river itself, a stoic stream creeping along muddy ledges.
In the dull calm of morning twilight, the crispness of October seeps through the seams of my jacket. The river, warm from running across blacktop into storm drains, breathes visibly into the morning air. The mist clings to the slow water, idly making its way downstream as commuters hurry by on parallel courses. Bicycle tires crackle on leaves and pop on acorns. On the far side of the river is the roar of the auto traffic; behind me over an earthen berm are the rumbling tracks of the trolley. Sitting on the root of an old red oak, staring downriver at small trees dangling their branches into the murk, I might be forgiven the fantasy that the susurrant roar was the wind or ocean; steel wheels thundering on tracks can be taken for white water on rocks.
High above the varied noises of people and their machines making their ways to work is the busy clatter of birds. They speak of dwindling supplies of insects, an abundance of berries and tree nuts, and the constant redrawing and reinforcement of territorial boundaries, written in birdsong. A jay calls his name. Robins chatter and squabble. Nuthatches nasally chide each other and woodpeckers exchange whinnies.
Mallards drift along the black glass of the river. They dabble for sunken crumbs and the males bob their green heads in courtship. Females, patterned brown, duck heads in kind, to comfort their mates that their bond still holds. Straggling Canada geese, whose ancestors would have long left for southern lands, glide past stranded coffee cups. They linger for handouts and thrive on vast acres of manicured lawns that have replaced the farmland and the forest before it. The river, warmed and salted by its former life as street runoff, never freezes and provides refuge for ducks that migrate and geese that do not.
When the sun climbs over the hospital buildings, its light tumbles down through the high oaks and into the stained glass patterns of the lower trees and shrubs. Burning bush and viburnum splay pink and red like spilled wine. Chokecherry and crabapple are yellowing and ochred, weeping birches are already going bald at the top. The coarse leaves of the rangy swamp dogwoods redden and curl. Stubborn knotweeds and grasses cling green to the riverbank, loathe to drain away to brown.
The splendid beauty of October’s great show, painted in pigment and waning light, is a bittersweet glory. As any creature that has weathered more than one year keenly knows, Autumn’s colors are the reverse of the rainbow’s solace. As the beech leaves swell violet and maple’s crimsons explode, as ivy berries ripen blue and mosses cling to green, Nature warns that it all will give way soon to hard stony gray and cruel cold white.
