Seasons come to our bodies much like they do to trees and mountains, lakes and bays. Each individually has its own rhythm and signs of changing, adapting, and flowing from one season to the next, until the momentum of so many heralds the new season en masse.
Beckoned by the brilliant sunshine, predictions of temperatures in the high 40s, and the lengthening daylight, I went walking over the weekend at the Ashokan Reservoir to look for signs of spring, and I ran smack-dab into winter. Each of us has places where we go to seek out the seasons, and the Ashokan Reservoir is one of mine. The reservoir, in Ulster County, is a magnificent place unto itself, 13 square miles ringed by forested shoreline and a backdrop of beautiful Catskill Mountain peaks. (This is not to discount its controversial history, since New York City acquired the area and displaced a large number of communities in the early 20th century in order to create the reservoir as one of its sources for drinking water.)
The reservoir’s two long walkways, one an actual promenade and the other a closed road the public now uses, provide a panorama of each season, from the appearance of the water to the plants and grasses along the slopes to the palette of the trees and the soft, rounded mountain ridges. Because the walkways are elevated, one feels at times as if you can almost touch the huge open sky or become bedazzled by the cloud show rolling in front of you and above.
Punxsutawney Who?
It’s about this time every year that I start to feel spring will be here soon, no matter what Punxsutawney Phil says. Each person has her or his own sense of the early hints that spring is on its way. “The snowdrops will pop up Feb. 14 or so,” said a friend and colleague recently. I eagerly track the lengthening daylight, for one. On Feb. 8, New York City saw an hour and 15 minutes more daylight than on Dec. 21, the Winter Solstice. I also feel it in any spate of sunny days we get in late January and February. A meteorologist may not agree with this, but as I say, seasons come to our bodies individually.
Of spring’s arrival, naturalist Hal Borland wrote, “the vernal equinox doesn’t occur til the end of this week, but I saw and felt and smelled winter preparing to call it quits yesterday, around four o’clock in the afternoon. That doesn’t mean no more snow or ice or sleet. All it means is change, which is slow and often interrupted.”
As someone who loves both winter and spring, I often feel around this time of year that I have a foot standing in both seasons. The winter person wants to still ice skate while the spring person is eager to walk or bike in a favorite spring jacket. The trick – and the lesson the Ashokan Reservoir often teaches me, is: Be in the season of this day, of this present moment.
Driving up to the reservoir from New Paltz on a brightly sunny, getting-warmer Sunday afternoon, I expected to see and smell some of the earliest signs of the coming season. But the Ashokan Reservoir on this day was squarely in winter. In fact, it felt more firmly planted in winter than the weather just a couple of miles away. The first sign was how stiff and bracing the winds felt along the water, with the wheat-beige stalks shivering and shimmering on the slopes down to it.
The view confirmed this sense. Dense ice and snow covered almost the entire reservoir, in different patterns. Along the shoreline, the trunks and branches of the leafless white birches punctuated the dark evergreens. A thick cover of snow made the curves of the distant mountains look even softer under the diffuse yellow light of the later afternoon.
In this frozen world, the eye naturally seeks out color and light. Much of the ice contained beautiful pale turquoise and silver crystal-like swirls. Long slivers of sunlight, cast between the tree shadows, danced in turns on the snow like natural spotlights. A bank of yellow-green cedars along one wall of trees was showy among the dark green and brown. A golden-yellow light bathed the small cumulus clouds in the western sky, almost too shiny to look at directly.
We stayed a short while longer, as the first deep shadows came to the coves and the hollows with the sun on its late-afternoon arc downward. Soon it would set over High Point Mountain. The air was cold, clear, tingly, and exhilarating. It felt nowhere near those high 40s I had seen on the weather forecast monitors, though it probably actually hit that mark on the thermometer. A couple-dozen people were on the roadway, walking with quickness in their steps and taking in the beauty.
Following Seasonal Change
Though loving winter as I do, I’ll still be among those watching for the signs of spring. At the beginning of his book North With the Spring, naturalist Edwin Way Teale wrote that “spring advances up the United States at the average rate of about 15 miles a day.” I have always loved that concept, being able to almost picture the travel of spring in North America, but knowing it’s neither linear nor cut-and-dry as humans heading up I-95. In the late 1940s, Teale and his wife Nellie took a 17,000-mile journey, up the Eastern Seaboard, to describe in detail the arrival of spring.
You can get a great sense of this progression by checking out the Journey North, in which K-12 students share their field observations of migrating birds and mammals and other seasonal changes with students and teachers across North America. Folks surely will record their observations of signs the new season is around the corner for the Hudson River Almanac, which engages those along the Hudson River from New York City northward to its source in the Adirondacks.
On this day, the Ashokan Reservoir delivered a wintry punch when some were eager for signs of spring, greeting us on its own terms, as always, and reminding me not to get so far ahead of myself that I miss the gifts of today.
Note: Do you have a favorite sign of spring or experience of winter? What is your favorite place(s) to experience the seasons? Share it in with Mindful Walker in a comment below.
How can we read of the Ashokan Reservoir and not mention Jay Ungar’s plaintive piece “Ashokan Farewell”? This is the beautiful music that was used by Ken Burns as the theme for his “Civil War” series. Anyone not familiar with Ungar’s tune owes him/herself the pleasure of hearing it. I believe you, the Mindful Walker author, know it well.
As you viewed the wintry punch offered at the reservoir at the time of your visit, did you have that tune running through your mind? And did you imagine yourself saying farewell to the stark whiteness, anticipating the spring that is waiting to erupt? That’s what would’ve filled my head.
Wonderful comment!
I can see how the “Ashokan Farewell” would be a natural to hear while walking along the reservoir’s walkway, especially on a sullen late-fall or wintry day. The story behind the music, as you surely know (but related here for others): It’s named for the nearby Ashokan camp where Jay Ungar and Molly Mason have done fiddle and dance camps since 1980. As Ungar recalls on their Web site, he composed “Ashokan Farewell” in 1982 after the fiddle and dance camps had come to an end for the season and he felt a sense of loss. It certainly has that mood!
Ken Burns heard the album with this music in 1984 and instantly took to it. He asked to use it in his Civil War series, and the rest is, well, history.
Ungar and Mason have a nifty page that tells all about the “Ashokan Farewell,” provides an audio clip of the music, and contains other stuff on it.
According to Ungar, the tune is written in the style of a Scottish lament. Interesting and beautiful!
I have had Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” in my head sometimes when walking at the Ashokan Reservoir.
Thanks so much,
Susan
The lengthening of days is my favorite sign of spring. As I left work at nearly 6 pm today, there was still enough light to perceive color. After a couple months of driving home in the dark, even the muted colors of dusk were a welcome sight!
I don’t think there’s a better place to experience the change of seasons than in my own front yard. Each season has its own fragrance and hue. Any child knows the smell of November snow or the nasal tingle brought on my the fresh grasses of March. June is the scent of flowers and grills. September brings burning leaves or patio chimineas. To watch the gray of Winter give way to the pastels of Spring; to see the mature greens that come with Summer; to watch the fiery colors of Fall replace those deep greens. Smell and sight – the seasons are a delightful sensory assault.
And all I have to do is open my front door.
Nita,
So true about our own backyards, and in New York City, it’s the streets outside or the “pocket park” at the end of the block. What lovely description of those seasonal signs, from the fresh grasses of March to the patio chimineas to the “fiery colors” of fall.
That also makes me realize what a superb “backyard” Central Park is, with its crocuses in early spring to the deep, lush green of the Sheep Meadow in summer, and the rusts, yellows, and oranges of the trees in autumn.
Your description of your own wonderful backyard inspired me to think of all of that.
Thanks,
Susan
Birds are my favorite indicators of spring. Even as early as now, in mid-February, one hears the differences in songs on a sunny morning. Last Sunday, Feb. 8, I was at Sandy Hook – on the path around a still dormant salt marsh on the bay side, and I heard the familiar song (which to me sounds like “konk-a-reeeeeee”) of a red-winged blackbird in the earliest beginnings of courtship season. Later in the season, he will develop a vibrant bright red patch with yellow on both wings, and he will add new songs and ticks/clicks to his repetoire. But right now, the hopeful “konk-a-reeeee” lets me know that spring is right around the corner.
And when I see my first snowy egret of the season, I will know that spring is really finally here, and as I always do, will yell out to it (or think to myself if in a group that does not understand) – “welcome back!!!!”
Chris,
Yup, various birds are a wonderful and welcome signal of spring. I learned something from you concerning that patch of the red-winged blackbirds, which I love. This online encyclopedia entry explains nicely about the male’s bright red shoulder patches.
And Professor Herb Wilson of Colby College provides a lovely and informative sketch of the red-winged blackbirds’ habits, breeding range, and return in spring:
http://mainebirds.blogspot.com/2007/03/for-birds-red-winged-blackbirds-con-ka.html
For our readers, here are excellent images of the male and female red-winged blackbirds:
http://sdakotabirds.com/species/red_winged_blackbird_info.htm
Love your capturing of the bird’s song! I could hear it.
Thanks,
Susan
There’s a what-if alternative history between those reservoirs and the interior of South Jersey. In the mid-19th Century Joseph Wharton bought up thousands of acres from the owners of mills made uncompetitive by the industrial switch to coal. Wharton drew up elaborate plans for a network of reservoirs that would deliver water to Philadelphia. He probably would have succeeded except for the politics created by the intervening state boundary: Trenton legislators didn’t care about supplying Philadelphia needs and nixed the plan. Wharton was saddled with an expanse of scrub pine that now makes up a state forest that carries his name.
It was about this time of year a few years back when we had one of those teasingly warm days and I hopped my bicycle and pedaled deep into Wharton State Forest. There I discovered that it was still pretty cold under the evergreen canopy, especially when one splashed through the ice water puddles that had collected along the washboard furrows of the trails. To make matters worse a cloud cover developed and hid the sun, and I became directionally disoriented — a rare enough condition that I hadn’t bothered to pack a compass or map. To make a long story short, I’m grateful for the EMS squad that answered my 911 call when I finally emerged on the wrong side of the forest in an early stage of hypothermia. I’ve become more cautious about exploring those early signs of spring!
Martin,
What a story about your Wharton State Forest hint-of-spring day! Wow.
I’ve explored some of the Wharton forest, during my South Jersey days. It’s great. I can recall steamy summer or late-spring clear days among those scrub pines more than early spring. I’ve canoed along the Oswego and Wading rivers, which are part of the forest, to my knowledge.
Isn’t it ironic how some folks’ mega schemes turn out? I didn’t know how Wharton State Forest came to be…quite interesting.
That EMS squad was a blessing that day!
Thanks,
Susan