The Year Takes Its Time

On a rainy autumn day in Harriman, the finest autumn and the strangest colors were not in the forest or the treetops, but at the water’s edge, on the lake. Dark, deep water; fallen leaves scattered beside the decaying summer lotus leaves — another kind of brilliance. Look closer: beads of water on the leaves, enough to lose track of the season entirely — spring, summer, autumn, winter.

At Mohonk in autumn, the colors on the mountaintop are always more delicate than below. Early morning, the lake dark and deep; riders already out along the shore. The pavilion still empty, its posts framing the morning light. Crowds come and go, the trees turn — only the rocks unchanged, as ever.

Harriman again, autumn again, rain again. The lake a mirror; the woods with the cool beauty of a runway model — high cheekbones, hastily done hair, sharp lines. Two old boats have rested at the bank so long that autumn has climbed aboard. Deep in the woods, a shaft of light — so bright on the other side. Could that be heaven?

The branches in the foreground look like a family out to see the autumn colors, standing tall and small, still passing judgment on the colors across the shore.

Both late autumn, yet nothing alike. The first: first snow in sunlight, yellow leaves still on the branches, snow redrawing the wood in white.

The second: rain falling, the light already going. Beside a dim path, bare branches tangle — then a flash of yellow, like flame climbing the branches, recording the last of autumn.

At Minnewaska, along the path by the upstream creek, the little mounds of snow were especially lovely. Ink-black water against white banks, as if color had stopped working here.

And then the falls downstream: deep winter, the flow thinned but not yet frozen — a little movement still remained. Snow mounded along the bank, soft and rounded, nothing like the hard edges of ice and broken rock in the stream.