My favorite season of the year to row is Autumn. Sometimes with others, most often alone.
Boat traffic on the lake is minimal; the trees along the shoreline are resplendent in color; not a sound is heard but the rhythmic splash of the oars and my labored breathing; and the green-become-red and yellow leaves layer the water’s black surface creating a carpet of color separated by the wake left behind my narrow shell, whirl-pooled behind the blades.
Through these beautiful leaves sprinkled about – with darkness above, and darkness below – I quietly row on, imagining myself sculling through the stars.
Upon returning to the dock, I place my oars in their slot, rack my shell, and head on about my day, the sun just then beginning to peek over the hill, it’s first rays filtered through the trees.
Some mornings, dark foreboding clouds pregnant with rain will chase me to the dock, their soon arrival heralded by an increasing stirring of those leaves, troubling what had been moments before a glass-like water, rocking my fragile craft.
One morning I paused for a moment before what once was my father’s beautifully restored Model A. He did all the work himself, even painted it the same mellow yellow color of a car he had in his youth.
Now it is a burned out hulk, parked in such a way as to reveal wheels twisted from the heat of the fire that destroyed not only it but everything in the business there on the water for which dad lived, and the place he so loved. Patina brown rust has replaced any vestige of its once showroom quality glory.
Glory is what describes the maple tree planted immediately adjacent. Stunningly vibrant hues of red, yellow, and orange, even shades of dark burgundy like rich, red wine adorn this striking contrast to the twisted metal hiding in the shadows.
The beauty of the leaves of the tree is the result of the process of degradation, decay, and death transforming the green leaves of summer into the myriad colors of fall as days shorten and temperatures fall. Colors that have been in the leaf all its life begin to show through as this masking effect slowly fades away.
Death, in either case, was on display.
One a once-beauty parked forever a memory, the other a returning beauty planted, forever a harbinger of life and love yet to be.
