For the eyes that glory in autumn’s rich, awe-inspiring colors or spring’s bright exuberance, winter may feel like the ho-hum season, one big letdown. To many, it’s “dreary” winter, a time to hunker down inside and hang on until the color in the Northern climes “returns” to the trees, bushes, and flowerbeds come spring.

Yet winter has its own full and natural palette if we only look closely. Hal Borland knew this very well, most of all. Borland, a naturalist and author of more than 30 books, crafted sharp-eyed and beautiful writings on nature and the outdoors in editorials for 35 years for The New York Times until his death in 1978. He knew that winter has its way with color, one that could enrich the day and a good walk as surely as spring or summer or fall.

Of winter, Borland once wrote, “The color, we say, is gone, remembering vivid October and verdant May. What we really mean is that the spectacular color has passed and we now have the quiet tones of winter around us….” Borland had the eye and the patience to notice and appreciate winter’s colors around his farm in the lower Berkshires. I’ve remembered his thoughts on color in this dormant season for many years, especially when I’ve seen the red tops of the British soldier lichen, the festive red berries on a holly bush, or the ruddy brown of cattail tops.

So, inspired by Borland, I went on a walk looking for winter’s colors in Central Park. The calendar says that winter officially starts on Dec. 21, but the temperatures and feel of the season in the Northeast and New York, in my view, say it has begun. It’s the time when the autumnal brilliance has given way to the look that sets in for winter. And indeed, Borland’s essay “Winter Color” first appeared on Dec. 4, 1960, in the Times.

As I set out, it didn’t take long to see what Borland meant. Entering from Columbus Circle and gazing out over the southwest corner of Central Park, I immediately spotted the yellow-green of a very large deciduous tree – with many of its leaves still clinging – right next to the deep forest green of a spruce. I walked east and then north in Central Park checking out what winter had to show in its palette on a gray afternoon, and it turned out to be plenty.

In summer, flowers and leaves often catch our eye, but in winter, the trunks of trees draw the eyes much more than they do at other times, perhaps. Often, the trunks’ patterns and sculpture are dazzling, from deep-brown knots that look almost like owl’s eyes staring out of a tree to charcoal brown, light orange, and cream-colored swirls, nature’s own totem. On a red oak along one roadway, thick wavy stripes ran up the long, huge trunk, light gray alternating with rough brown bark. The oak’s rust-and-green speckled leaves flashed against the backdrop of a gray sky. And the maple leaves lying nearby on the ground were tie-dyed green and sunny gold. Borland is right – there is color!

Taking In the Variation

Fallen leaves trimmed the sidewalk, and examining them closely showed a party mix of colors: light brown, sage green, orange-gold, beige, dark yellow. Once attuned to this variation, I noticed how winter’s more muted colors make you pay even more attention to form, like the brown and black branches of so many tree tops in ballet poses, some curled and rounded, some erect. The trunks of a couple of London plane trees had coats of deep-green English ivy vines, with white veins coursing through each green ivy leaf.

Two trees in the vicinity of the Chess & Checkers House prove that conifers come in many shades. A delicate blue Atlas cedar – a fairly rare find in Central Park – was fresh, cool, and stately in blue-green finery. Nearby, an American larch, a deciduous conifer, had still hung on to many of its golden yellow needles, and it was dotted with dark brown cones. In one corner near a walking bridge, one could see eight different shades of green in all of the plants and trees.

A December day in Central Park, as I notice on more and more of my afternoon walk, is hardly dreary, color-wise. The scene from sitting outside the chess house offered the red of berries, the golden yellow, blue-green, and forest green of the conifers, the tan of vines on the pergola, as well as orange, rust, light green, and wine-red, among other colors. When snow falls, it makes such a scene all the more beautiful.

Of course, the light pink blossoms of the Yoshino cherry trees and the pink flowers and magenta buds of the Eastern redbuds in Central Park will be most welcome when they return in spring. Still, something in December’s subdued color fits the quiet of a winter walk. It’s more contemplation than dance, and yet at certain moments, every bit as eye-catching as other seasons.

As Hal Borland observed of winter’s less-spectacular but nonetheless lovely shades, “The color is still there, though its spectrum has somewhat narrowed. Perhaps it takes a winter eye to see it, an eye that can forget October and not yearn for May too soon.”