To Be Quiet And Move Slowly

Northeast Fall And Seasons’ Signals

There are some things in my life that I’m surprised to find out I have never seen even in pictures. But it makes sense if you know me well enough. I am a pretty sporadic person, jumping from thing to thing and all that jumping around, bouncing like a golden retriever puppy, makes me forget the things I’ve seen or simply forget to look at things in the first place. The first time I saw Zion National Park was when I drove through it with my dad in 2015. Driving into Yosemite Valley, too, I wasn’t sure I’d ever properly seen it depicted. And the same could be said for a Northeastern fall.

The way fall blankets the Green Mountains of Vermont is something that will always shock anyone, even those, I hope, who are from there. The way in which the cold starts to envelop the land, the crisping of the air mixed with wind and, of course, the wild and breathtaking colors. When I first saw this as a student at Bennington, just turned 21, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like witnessing magic—something I looked at and admired, but something, at least when I first saw it, I could not believe existed.

I remember the first time telling some other kids at Bennington what I saw, completely enamored. They all sort of brushed it off—it was just the seasons changing and nothing new to them. For me, I just couldn’t believe how colorful the Green Mountains turned, cloaked in bright hues of yellows and oranges and reds, mixed with the evergreen white pines. It was so shocking to see a green hillside, something that growing up in the North Bay you don’t really see change, turn into so many bright and varied colors.

But after that little stint with those other students, I eventually found some friends who, though growing up near there, were still in awe of this magic. And for some reason, this week, I can’t stop thinking about fall in the Northeast. 

One feeling, in the short three years I spent on the east coast, I felt most acutely about the fall was the return to the inside—the move from being out in the heat and the days being full of so many things to do, the sun and the warm humid air telling you to go out, do things, run around or laze about with the heat of the sun always at your back. The change of the leaves, the colder rains and air, they were all a portent asking us to go inside, to get cozy. To be quiet and move slowly because winter is coming. 

I loved going on hikes in the fall around that time, listening to the crisp leaves on the forest floor, hearing red squirrels hissing and bounding in and out of the leaves. Everything was so quiet. The stillness in the air pushing all the creatures away and the thin trunks of the trees left with nothing much to disturb them save the sound of my feet on the forest floor. I loved that return to quiet. 

A friend of mine just drove across the country to work on a vineyard in the Hudson Valley. Maybe that’s why I’ve been thinking so much about fall colors and gray skies. It will be so quiet there for them in the fall and winter. It will ask them to go inside and stay warm. And I’d love a marker like that, something to tell me, my body, it’s time to duck away and go to a quiet place.

For the years I was on the east coast, I always thought about how much I missed the West Coast, the broad trunked trees and wide open expanses that I could drive through without much thought. I missed the light, the dry heat of summers. But I had never known a real fall, or felt a deep cold, until I went to Vermont.

In the Bay last week we had a small heatwave. It felt like the middle of summer again, not the end. And the forecast looks to be nice and warm for most of the coming weeks. But I want that feeling again of crisp and cold air on my nose, asking me to slow down, to go inside, find some quiet because winter is coming along with real cold, frigid winds.